


Voyage of the Sunset Swimmer

by aurilly



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alien Dance Clubs, Attempted Kidnapping, First Time, Friends to Lovers, IN SPACE!, M/M, Not Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, Picaresque, Pining, Protective Bucky Barnes, Quests, Rescue, Roommates, Sex Pollen, Slow Burn, Swords & Sorcery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-01
Updated: 2020-06-01
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:27:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 28,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24189628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aurilly/pseuds/aurilly
Summary: After Thanos's victory, Heimdall and Valkyrie arrange to have Loki smuggled off Earth, along with another fugitive in need of a fresh start.Loki isn't sure their ship is big enough to hold the souvenirs that Bucky insists on buying at every goddamn rest stop.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Loki
Comments: 32
Kudos: 154
Collections: Hurt Comfort Exchange 2020





	Voyage of the Sunset Swimmer

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Unforgotten](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unforgotten/gifts).



"Carol Danvers is rounding past Mercury now. She will be here in a few minutes," Heimdall said. His eyes were closed and he gripped the hilt of his sword with both hands. "The Norwegian delegation is already at the edge of the town, rounding the coast."

"And the Wakandans?" Loki asked.

"Their ship is speeding across Germany. The players are all converging." With his report delivered, Heimdall opened his eyes and relaxed his shoulders. "Which means, your highness, that you should make yourself scarce. And no mischief."

"Is that your final word to me?" Loki asked in a mockery of great hurt. "After all the time we have known one another?"

"This is not a goodbye. You'll be back," Heimdall replied, letting the warmth of a lifetime's worth of observation wash over Loki. "You always come back, whether you want to or not."

"Like a cockroach, from what I've gathered," Valkyrie said. "Now, cheers! To good luck and good travels. And to getting you out of our hair."

Loki had no glass with which to toast, but then again, neither did she. Valkyrie pulled Loki's hand off the windowsill to fist-bump the base of her bottle of ice wine. She offered it to Loki, who took one sniff and shook his head. 

"I'll drink for both of us, then," she said.

Their actual farewells were, gratifyingly, a little warmer. After receiving them, Loki took his leave and made himself invisible. The train of black limousines carrying the Norwegian officials who had come to see off the Statesman was already coming into view. Loki drew close to where their car drove slowly, slowly down the main street of the fishing village. Slowly enough that Loki could walk beside it and listen to the conversation they whispered behind their false smiles. 

"Well, this is a welcome day," said the Prime Minister. "They have allowed this eyesore to stain our beautiful fjords long enough."

"If only we could rid ourselves of the people, too," replied his secretary.

"We cannot outright flaunt the decrees of the United Nations. Not so soon after… everything. But I, too, wish them well away. I do not understand why they had to come here, of all the planets in the universe."

"The feeling is mutual," Loki mumbled to himself, too low for them to hear. He hated that Asgard had been forced to rely upon charity, and _human_ charity, to boot. But the real affront, the true source of his outrage was the begrudging nature of this charity. The humans had actually convinced themselves that Asgard now owed them something—protection, information, technology, who knew. If anything, this current arrangement should have been Earth repaying the _Aesir_ for over a thousand years of protection.

Ingrates.

Loki followed the diplomats all the way up the road. They made their way to the starboard side of the Statesman, where the Aesir and diplomats from the few countries that could currently spare them had gathered for the official departure ceremony. Loki stuck his foot in front of the Norwegian officials as they exited the vehicle, reducing them to figures of ridicule when they tripped and landed on their faces. Knowing the pettiness of his satisfaction did not lessen the enjoyment of watching them stammer and stumble their way back to upright and self-important. 

Heimdall frowned at the spot where he must have known Loki stood, and Loki frowned invisibly back. It was only the _barest_ mischief. Surely it didn't count. 

Loki had tried to warn Thor, from the outset, against setting a course for Earth, but the pig-headed fool had insisted his plan was foolproof. "I'm enormously popular,", he'd said. He'd be able to leverage that popularity into a parcel of land, as well as indemnity for Loki, he'd said. There were humans who studied a dull-sounding field called 'anthropology', he'd said; they would jump at the chance to observe people they had once worshipped as gods. These anthropologists would lobby for an Asgardian settlement in Norway, he'd said. It would all work out beautifully, he'd said. "You've always been such a pessimist," he'd said.

Thor had said a lot of things, but his plan had not accounted for Thanos. He had budgeted neither for the Titan's chase of the Asgardians across the cosmos, nor for his eventual triumph when his enemies, Loki included, fell prey to weak-willed sentiment. They had—all of them—practically handed him the stones to save the ones they loved in one moment, only to lose them in the next. 

Now Thor was gone, turned to dust along with half the universe, on top of the Asgardians Thanos had killed when leaving the Statesman. Now Loki was left all alone, adrift in all the ways he'd feared, and more.

Something blindingly bright came barreling through the sky, faster and more spectacular than a comet. A woman landed among them, glowing with power. Impressively more power, Loki hated to admit, than Loki had ever imagined. Interesting as she was, however, Loki only half attended to her; his eyes still scoured the sky for the Wakandan delegation, which Valkyrie had told him only that more was to foist upon him a last-minute and wholly unknown first mate.

"When, exactly, did you plan on telling me?" Loki had sputtered earlier that morning. 

"Now?" she'd replied.

"When it's too late to interfere." 

"Of course," she'd said with a wide grin and a swig of something vile-smelling. "Did you really think we would let you go off on your own, unsupervised?"

"I am not a child."

"Debatable," she'd said, pinching his thin cheeks. 

"And who is this jailor that you are foisting upon me? Not an Avenger, I hope. They are the most tedious lot."

"No, none of them could be spared, and none of them want to go adventuring with you. It's someone else. Some sort of assassin, I don't know much more than that."

"Didn't you ask?" Loki could not believe this—any of it. He had thought he and Valkyrie had been getting along better. For one, she'd stopped called him 'Lackey'. He'd thought it meant something. And now, here she was, casting him out with a trained killer. 

"I did ask, but I don't remember the answer. I was drunk. But he's been vetted. It's all right. We're not secretly sending you to your death. He's not that type of assassin."

"I wasn't aware there was more than one type." 

"He's some sort of fugitive. An innocent assassin."

"Isn't that an oxymoron? Do you mean that he's simply a hapless assassin, too incompetent to have killed anyone?" Loki didn't know what was worse: a real assassin or a pathetic one.

"Banner has it on good authority that he is innocent in all the ways that count. I think he was framed? Something like that. The king of Wakanda offered him refuge, but with the whole family now gone, the dissidents taking power want to give him up to the tribunals for trial and execution. So, he needs to be smuggled to safety, just like you. The only safe place for him is off the planet entirely."

Loki had immediately despised him. The poor little fugitive, on whom everyone was taking such pity. 

"If his protectors are all dead, then who is arranging this?" Loki asked next.

"An agent loyal to the Wakandan royal family's memory. And Agent Romanov."

"Why does she care?"

"She is doing it in the memory of a friend of hers. It's what the friend would have wanted. Apparently, her friend and this man were as brothers."

Loki's immediately thought of Hawkeye, but he had seen photographs of him on the news—recent ones that confirmed his continued existence. Which could only mean…

"Not Captain America. You're saddling me with a friend of _that_ buffoon? That means he'll be an awful bore. I make no promises not to stab him within the hour. I'm assuming he's never been off-world before. He'll require so much effort, like a babe. I can't…" 

"You can," Heimdall, entering the room, had said, in the tone that had been quelling Loki's temper since Loki had still been in toddler's dresses.

Loki continued to despise the idea of this man, even as a black ship, sleek and impressive, now landed near where Heimdall and Valkyrie stood greeting Danvers and the Norwegian officials. A stately, beautiful warrior with fanciful markings on her bald head stepped out. From the steely, haunted expression on her face and the overly tight grip on her spear, Loki guessed that she was not only the diplomat, but also the grieving devotee of the lost royal family.

Loki almost felt sorry to leave this awful rock; he would have liked to get to know her (meaning, tease her until that statuesque composure broke, or she tried to stab him, probably both).

She was accompanied by two soldiers so regally outfitted that they might have passed muster even in Odin's court. The men unloaded extravagantly decorated trunks out of the Wakandan ship and wheeled them into the Statesman. These trunks contained tools and supplies that Wakanda was providing in hopes that Danvers would share them with people in need, all across the galaxy, as a token of Earth's good will and desire to take its place in the larger universe. Or so the Wakandan woman said.

Loki, still invisible, could tell that the moment for departure approached. He walked up the gangplank once the Norwegian officials began to make their final remarks. Many long-winded speeches later, Danvers politely took her leave with a wave. She entered the cockpit where Loki sat, and began the ignition sequence. 

"I know you're there," she said. "Give it one more minute and we'll be high enough that no one will be able to see you."

The ship groaned and gasped its way into motion. Loki laughed, nastily, when gas from its exhaust blew the Norwegian diplomats to the ground. His last memory of Heimdall, at least for the foreseeable future, would be the sight of the Watcher's usually serious face cracking into the smallest of smiles. 

Once they had risen high enough to see the shape of the green and grey coastline below them, Loki released the invisibility spell.

"Hello," he said, with what he thought was great politeness.

"Hey there. You've got to be Loki."

"I am."

"Where's the other guy?"

"I assume in one of the crates."

"Then you know how to make yourself useful."

Loki had no effective retort, so he left the small cockpit and entered the enormous hold. Before today, he had never seen the place so empty, so quiet. In his mind, the Statesman's hold _was_ new Asgard, more real and more his than any fishing village would ever be. It had held families and weathered squabbles—not to mention Korg's disastrous attempts at sport—and been its own little kingdom. The kind of kingdom in which, despite lacking all the trappings and grandeur he'd always thought he'd cared about, Loki had felt most at home. And Loki had ruled it from the side, in the way that Odin and Frigga had always wanted him to rule. He'd resisted the idea while they were alive, but now, at last, too late, he'd realized that younger princes _did_ have more fun. All the potential glory of heroism, all the satisfaction of power, the ability to slink off when they got bored. He and Thor had been on good terms, playful again after so many years of strife. The people of Asgard had (somewhat) forgiven him. All had been well.

And then Loki had destroyed it, as he destroyed everything that brought him joy. He'd caused Thanos to chase them. Gotten Thor killed. Gotten half the universe killed. Left Asgard in a backwater village on Midgard. And now he was being sent away to ensure everyone's—including his own—well-being. Now, the only people aboard the Statesman were Loki, a woman whose mere presence made him feel smaller than anyone had in a while, and a stranger he assumed he'd find in one of these crates.

He opened crate after crate, finding only food and the supplies that the Wakandan diplomat had apparently been serious about providing. Loki expected to find more trinkets, not a man, when he levered open one of the littlest crates. 

He looked small at first, all folded in on himself in a position that could not have been comfortable to hold for as long as he must have been holding it. But as he stretched and rose, Loki saw that he was anything but small. A man of almost Loki's height, and definitely more breadth, soon stood before him, half inside and half outside the box. A thin cloak over loose robes covered the empty socket where an arm should have hung. Long hair obscured the man's face, leaving Loki with nothing to look at but his body—impressive despite the missing arm—the strength of which the modest robes did little to hide. 

And then the man flipped his head with an elegant motion. The hair retreated, revealing a surprisingly handsome face defined by cold lines and warm, grey-blue eyes. The man took Loki in—all of him—but his blandly pleasant face gave away nothing about the results of his coolly thorough appraisal. 

"Hey," he said, looking all around him while keeping one eye on Loki. "Are you the guy?"

"I am Loki. Of Asgard," Loki answered, with a faint wince that he hoped the other man did not catch. For all that Heimdall kept insisting, in his gravely impressive way, that Asgard was 'a people, not a place', Loki still spent most of the time feeling that he belonged nowhere at all, even less than before. 

"I'm Bucky." The man proffered his right hand to shake, which Loki stared at for a moment before remembering the Midgardian custom. "Nice to meet you. Thanks for having me on board."

"It was not my doing," Loki answered, more rudely than he intended or truly felt. He had been thrown off his game by the man's voice, by his face, by his unnecessary friendliness, by the equipoise that someone emerging from a tiny crate ought not to have possessed. He had not thought that a friend of the, rather crass, honestly, Avengers could possess the bearing of an Einherjar general. 

"Either way," came the reply.

"They told me your name was James Barnes," Loki said next, puzzled about how the man had introduced himself.

"Yeah, but I go by Bucky. To friends, anyway."

Loki heard the polite invitation, the overture that unshowily refused to take the bait of his rudeness, and rejected it.

"Danvers is in the cockpit if you'd like to meet her."

"Sure," Bucky said with one last stretch.

Danvers had successfully navigated them out of the atmosphere while Loki had busied himself with the crates. A view of the Earth from an increasingly distant vantage point greeted them. The continents wrapped away and out of sight, past the edge of the planet's curvature. 

Bucky stared at it, awestruck, and Loki was reminded of his unfortunate greenness. 

"It's really something the first time, isn't it?" Danvers said. 

"Yeah," Bucky breathed. He stared for a few more seconds and then shook his head, came back to himself. He walked over where Danvers sat and said, "I'm—"

"I know who you are. And it's an honor to meet you," Danvers said, to Loki's surprise. "I'm Carol."

A shadow passed over Bucky's face. "You must have me mixed up with someone else. I'm not…"

She shook her head at whatever he'd been about to say. "You're Sergeant James Barnes. Of the 107th and the Howling Commandos. I had a poster of you on my wall growing up."

"You did?" Bucky asked, at the same time that Loki asked, "Why?"

"He's a historic war hero. Didn't you know?" Danvers explained. 

"That's not usually the first thing people say about me. Not anymore."

"Well, it's the only thing I care about. My sister always said you were cutest of the old heroes our dad was always talking about. She hung the poster in our room one time when she was trying to work dad into sending her to summer camp or something."

"So, it wasn't yours?" Bucky asked shyly, with a hint of mischievous charm that Loki had not expected to find in this solemn, one-armed mountain of a man. "You weren't the fan?"

She considered him with one eye, the other maintaining control over the ship. "You _are_ cute, but not my type."

"What _is_ your type?"

"Girls."

A flash, a little pink, passed across Bucky's chiseled cheekbones. He began to glance at Loki before abruptly aborting the motion. Then he laughed—an annoyingly delightful sound accompanied by a complete transformation of his face. He put his whole back into the act of laughing, making it a full-body exertion.

"Yeah," Danvers said with a small, endeared smile. "Definitely cute."

"If you'll take a moment from… whatever this is that you're doing, apparently _not_ flirting," Loki interjected tetchily, and a little bit jealously, because Bucky was meant to be _his_ companion, no matter how little Loki wanted him. He would _not_ be ranked second, not again. Not in this. Not when Bucky seemed so…

"Right, that reminds me. I brought this for you," Danvers said, pulling an envelope out of her leather attire—attire so form-fitting that, if Loki hadn't known better, he would have thought it had actually come out of one of the pocket universes he used for such things.

Loki opened it and began to read, but the individual letters swam before his eyes. All he could see was familiarity, nostalgia, and an ocean of longing, not meaning. "This is Frigga's writing," he whispered, fighting the urge to press his nose against it and drink in her memory. "How did you come by this?"

"It was a few years back. I got word that you guys needed help fixing the Bifrost, so I stopped by. I didn't get to meet you then."

"Ah, I would have been in a cell at that time."

"Yeah. For _breaking_ the Bifrost."

"Among other things." Loki was enjoying the bewildered expression on Bucky's previously placid face as he turned from one to the other during what must have been, to him, an incomprehensible exchange. A nice turnabout from how Loki had felt a moment before. "And how did you enjoy our fair city?" 

"It was fine. The beer was terrible, but the construction workers I hung out with were friendly. Anyway, I got to talking with the queen, in private. She told me there'd be a time when Asgard would face its greatest need, and then face it again. She said that would be when you should have this, as a guide to your journey, or something. It was pretty cryptic."

"She _was_ the goddess of Destiny."

"Yeah, so she said. That's why I gave her a pass."

"But why give it to you?"

"She said her usual safe spots wouldn't be safe for long enough. I should have known then that something big was coming," Danvers said regretfully. 

Yet another person who blamed themselves for what had happened. Loki felt a lashing of rage. How dare she. How dare she take the blame that was so obviously his? What had she to do with it at all? 

But Frigga's handwriting in his hands steadied him, as though he could still touch her through the pages. "She said I would need this? Me, specifically?" 

"Yeah, you. Her younger son. She said that you were going through some stuff, but would come out on the right side. Or close enough to the middle to count." Danvers looked Loki up and down, obviously hoping Frigga had been right, but retaining some doubts. "I can't imagine a time of greater need for Asgard, given, well, everything. What does it say?"

"You never read it?"

Danvers looked surprised at the question. "It wasn't addressed to me."

The fact that such a detail wouldn't have stopped Loki was lost on no one in the room. 

"What is it?" Bucky asked, entering the conversation for the first time, kindly breaking Loki's embarrassment.

Loki tried to read it, but his heart raced too fast— _Frigga_ —to make much sense of it. He needed to be alone, before they noticed the extent of his emotion. Since Danvers had, by her own admission, not looked closely enough to spot the lie, he masked his paralysis by saying, "Her note is in code. I will need some time to translate it."

"Well, you've got some time before we get where we're going."

"Where's that?" Bucky asked.

"Trading post a few star systems over. This clunker's good for carrying big cargo, but it's way too big for just two guys going on a quest, or whatever Frigga gave you."

"What do you propose?" Loki asked, suddenly saddened at the idea of leaving the Statesman, even though, logically, he knew Danvers was right. 

"I'll rent it out to a guy I know who helps refugees. Asgard isn't the only planet whose people need to be moved elsewhere. For the money you can get by the month for this ship, you can buy something smaller, faster. Something that makes sense for just two people. And have plenty of cash left over for supplies."

"You're not going to stick around?" Bucky asked, sounding disappointed.

"There's a lot going on around the universe, worse than normal, as you can probably guess. I have a lot to do."

"I don't know how to fly a spaceship." Bucky gestured at the flight controls all around the cockpit. 

"We've got time. My plan was to show you."

"You know, I always wanted to be a pilot," Bucky said, sitting down in the copilot seat. "I tried to sign up for the air force back in the war. But they were full up that month, so they sent me to the army instead." 

"I was Air Force," Danvers said, with a lack of smugness that Loki would not have been able to emulate.

"You were?" Bucky asked, almost as awed as he'd been by the curvature of the Earth.

They'd all but forgotten that Loki was even there. He tried not to feel slighted as they bonded over the gears and the mechanics of the ship. He tried not to feel ignored when they started trading mind-numbingly banal stories about the United States Military. He tried not to feel jealous when Bucky proceeded to pay this woman all of his attention. Loki reminded himself that he hadn't asked for him, that he didn't care. But he felt more invisible than when he'd actually been invisible, alone again.

Loki stared at the packet of paper in his hand and decided to leave them to it.

"Wait, so hyper-drive is a real thing?" was the last question he heard Bucky ask before slipping out of the room.

Loki wheeled one of the food crates to the other side of the ship, feeling ghosts wherever he looked. Ghosts of the families he had started to get to know on the long journey to Earth. Families who were now gone. 

He locked himself in the quarters where the biggest, most devastating ghost resided. Thor's room was just as he had left it, only dustier, covered in half-scribbled memoranda and dirty glasses. The unstoppered bottle of ointment he'd used to treat his eye wound (and probably to stroke himself at night, if Loki knew him, and he did). The straight razor he had actually trusted Loki to shave him with a few times. The sheets mussed sheets on the bed that Thor never, ever, made. 

It was technically only the second-best room on the ship; Loki, of course, had claimed the best one for himself before they'd even gotten out of Sakaar's airspace. But now, after the end, he preferred to torture himself in this one. He flopped on the cold bed that no longer smelled like his brother, and spread out the pages from their equally dead mother. 

He discovered that only the cover sheet had been written by Frigga. It was a message of love, of slight chastisement, of reassurance that she would meet her end with foreknowledge and acceptance. She urged him not to blame himself (too late), and reiterated that he was her beloved son. She promised that if only he opened his heart and mind and soul, he would regain that which had been lost, and never again feel alone. (Reading this was the first time Loki had ever questioned her powers, for it was awfully treacly, even for a mother.) There was a gentle post-script reminding him that stabbing people rarely turned them into friends. 

The rest of the papers must have come from different sources, for the sheets were of different sizes and in different languages, all ancient. Although he could not understand the words on most of them, he recognized some of the formats as instructions for casting spells. Still others appeared to be fables for children, or history books, it was hard to tell, and many of the words had been rubbed out. These were in scripts so ancient that they pre-dated even the All-Speak. However, the few fables in languages he _could_ read seemed to tell of Ragnarok. All the illustrations were circular, suggesting a cycle. But not just Ragnarok; of something next, and also of something that had already happened. 

Loki hadn't known there _was_ a next. The prophesy of Ragnarok had always sounded so final. Odin had never mentioned the concept of a cycle, not even in his dying moments, when such knowledge might have been useful. 

Typical.

Loki reached for a wedge of cheese from the box of food he'd taken with him.

He had a lot of work to do.

* * *

He didn't know how long had passed between leaving Earth and feeling the ship moving in a newly jolting fashion, but he had slept a few times, so it must have been long enough. 

Loki emerged to find Danvers still coaching Bucky through this latest maneuver. Bucky was rapt and attentive, his hand steady on the lever, as she walked him through this slowdown. 

"What is all this? Have we arrived?" Loki asked, but all he saw before them was the blackness of space.

"Hey, there," Bucky said, friendly as he'd been before, as though Loki hadn't rudely disappeared for days. "You've got good timing. I was about to come get you. Want an apple?"

"No, thank you," Loki replied stiffly. He didn't know whether to feel offended by how little he'd been missed, or to appreciate Bucky's solicitous demeanor.

"We're here," Danvers said.

What had looked like a starry mist a moment ago suddenly dissolved, revealing a medium-sized space station. A number of other ships were lined up for entry in front of them. 

"I'll vouch for us with the entry guards and then call my guy," Danvers said. "He'll set you up." 

"This does not look like a place of entirely good repute," Loki observed while Danvers introduced them over the radio. He took in the shabbiness of the docking stations and the unmarked nature of most of the ships coming and going around them. The biggest giveaway was the forcefield they had passed through; only places with much to hide invested in something so elaborate. 

"Oh, the place is definitely run by pirates. But they're all right. And they owe me one."

She let Bucky practice landing. Loki noted that, even with the only one arm, he'd become quite proficient at maneuvering all the levers and reading all the gauges and buttons around the cockpit. 

In order to continue the ruse that his lack of participation was due to disaffection instead of ignorance, Loki condescendingly complimented him. "You have come quite far in learning how to fly."

"Carol's a good teacher," Bucky said.

Loki had assumed they would need to explore this dirty, depraved-looking place to find Danvers's contact, but a spindly orange creature was waiting for them at their dock. He watched as it and Danvers exchanged some sort of complicated greeting. Then she introduced it to Bucky, who proceeded to copy Danvers's motions perfectly, biting his lip in concentration.

Loki felt charmed despite his contrary resolutions. He quickly squashed the weak reaction. 

"Who's the other one?" the creature asked, pointing a long tentacle at where Loki half-hid himself just inside the door of the ship.

"Oh, he's the other guy who'll be traveling with my friend here," Danvers said. "Make it a nice ship, because he's a little on the prissy side."

Loki was about to protest, because, no, _he_ was the important personage here. _He_ was the one with the quest. _He_ …

"We're partners," Bucky quickly interjected, but no, that wasn't right either, Loki thought.

Danvers caught Bucky looking hungrily out at the wet, dirty port landscape. His first steps off his own world.

"Why don't you take a walk? Knock yourself out. Dangit and I need to catch up anyway."

Bucky turned to Loki. "You coming?" 

The obstinate part of Loki wanted to say no, but he _had_ spent days locked up in a small room. Stretching his legs would feel good. 

"All right."

"If you follow the path past that tower, you'll get to a little market," Danvers said. "There's a stall that sells these great street snacks... They look like blue hot pockets. Bring me back one?" She tossed Bucky a card, presumably loaded with units. 

"What's a hot pocket?" Bucky asked, catching it deftly.

Danvers thought. "It's like a meat patty?"

Together, Loki and Bucky descended the Statesman and entered the crowed. Bucky stayed close to Loki's side, brushing against the ripples of Loki's cape when the crush of the crowd pressed them together. Loki cast about for something to say to this stranger with whom he was about to be sequestered. He saw now that perhaps he had squandered the opportunity to acquaint himself with Bucky while they still had Danvers as a mediating influence. 

However, for all his quiet reserve, Bucky seemed wholly unaware of Loki's discomfort, as if immune to awkwardness, like a block that had had all the prickly bits sanded away. His maddeningly imperturbable calm broke the tension that he didn't even seem to feel.

"You feeling any better?" he asked kindly, as though they had ever discussed Loki feeling anything but well.

"What do you mean?" 

"Holing up on the other side of the ship. Did it help?"

"I was studying. Reading what Frigga had left me," Loki explained defensively.

"Mm-hmm," Bucky replied, politely yet disbelieving. "Was that your old room you were, uh, studying in? Or someone else's?"

"It was Thor's room," Loki admitted, and then explained, because he had no idea how much Bucky knew about anything, "my brother, you know."

"Yeah, they told me."

A little lamely, Loki continued, "With him gone, I could finally enjoy the king's quarters."

"Right," Bucky said in the same knowing tone. "You were on the Statesman, weren't you, when it happened?"

"Yes," Loki said through gritted teeth, feeling that this getting a little too personal for a first chat. "But I was not awake for it. I was gravely wounded in our altercation with Thanos weeks before, and spent the rest of the journey to Earth in a near-comatose state. When I awoke… Well. And you?"

"I fought in the battle against Thanos and his army, in Wakanda. Saw the very first people go. Saw Steve and Shuri… Yeah." 

Loki supposed everyone left in the universe had been having similar conversations with new acquaintances. What they were doing must have been pedestrian, but this was his first experience of it. He had been too sick, and then too well-hidden, to have met anyone since Thanos's victory. 

Somehow, not even getting to see the tragedy he had helped wreak made everything worse. 

"The Steve you mentioned… That would be Captain Rogers, yes? Your friend?"

"Yeah. He was a friend." Bucky glanced warily at Loki, something close to nervous for the first time. "Was that all they told you about me?"

"No. That was not all," Loki replied, trying to insinuate that he possessed infinite details he did not. 

"Right. Well, whatever you've heard, you don't have to worry. I'm not like that anymore. I won't hurt you."

"I wasn't worried," Loki said, even as he noted how Bucky's words made him sound less 'innocent' than advertised. "I _am_ a god, you know. I can handle such a one as you."

"That's good," Bucky replied, more earnestly than Loki had expected after such a barb.

"And what have they told you about me?" 

"Not much. That you're that Thor guy's little brother. That Thanos blackmailed you or something into trying to take over the planet. That you're looking for a new place for your people to settle." And then, with an expectant lick of his lips that he did not seem to notice he was doing, Bucky finished, "That you're trouble."

"You don't seem to mind any of it."

"I'm used to looking out for stubborn troublemakers."

When Valkyrie had first told him about this fugitive, this framed assassin, Loki had imagined either a deranged psychopath with bulging eyes and grunting speech, or else a timid, traumatized little mouse. The former would have been entertaining and the latter malleable. What he had not expected was a perfectly normal man with what promised to be a sense of humor. Something a bit more interesting than either of Loki's previous imaginings.

"You ever been here before?" Bucky asked next.

"To this specific space station? No." Loki had never been to _any_ space station, actually. Even before his injury, he'd always preferred to wait inside the ship while Thor and Valkyrie reprovisioned the ship. But, in order to maintain an aura of superiority, he said in a lordly manner, "This one is very typical, though."

Bucky innocently took Loki at his word, the uncomfortable result of which was that he began testing Loki's scanty knowledge with earnest questions. He did not speak at great length, nor even very loudly, but every word seemed well-chosen, focused. Each question contained multitudes, leaving Loki with the choice to answer as little or as much as he chose. Still, Loki was forced to invent answers to a few questions, and to pretend that other knowledge was too inconsequential or vulgar to have bothered to learn.

Bucky's quiet curiosity knew no bounds. He had them stop at too many market stalls to count, wanting to know the name and purpose of everything in front of him. He tried to strike up conversations with the merchants, but, unfortunately, failed to understand their language. Loki was forced to translate for him with the All-Speak. 

"Can you tell how much is on this card?" Bucky asked eventually of the units Danvers had given him.

"What is it you want to buy?"

Bucky pointed at what looked like the most old-fashioned kind of blank book. "I ran out. I need a new one."

"Why not get a tablet?" Loki asked. "They're cheaper and more efficient. This sort of thing is antique, more for collecting than use. I could not believe that you on Midgard still used them at all."

"It works better if I physically write it out, not type."

"Write what out?"

"I write down things I remember. As much as I can. Just in case anyone tries to take my memories again."

Loki schooled his face to hide his surprise at the word 'again'. He realized how little he actually knew about his new companion. 

"I don't think…" Loki began to say, but then Bucky's plush, catlike lips, usually so straight, bowed downwards, forming a viscerally saddening frown that Loki simply could not stand. "I'll sort it out."

Loki had not shopped in many markets before; he had always had what he wanted procured for him. Only today did he begin to realize how ill-equipped his life had left him for the journey he was about to undertake. It was Bucky who, even without speaking the language or knowing the value of things, sensed that the merchant was trying to swindle them. And then again when they located the foodstuffs Danvers had requested. For the rest of their walk, he haggled, leaving Loki a whiplash-struck middleman between Bucky's affectations of disaffection and the merchants' wheedling. 

Loki had always thought that bargaining was for plebeians, but once he got into the spirit of the thing, he rather enjoyed it, and excelled at it. They made a good deal-seeking team. Loki's lies complemented Bucky's inveigling earnestness. 

(And when, it turned out that they lacked sufficient credits to afford even the ultimately agreed-upon price for Bucky's latest acquisition, Loki decided to mistranslate the true state of affairs to his companion, and steal the trinket with the use of an illusion.)

By the time they made their way back to the dock, Loki's arms were laden with snacks, notebooks, and instruction manuals for various popular languages that Bucky, with his one arm, could not carry.

"I suppose I see the use of the language manuals, but what are you going to do with the rest of all this?" Loki asked.

"Whatever people usually do with souvenirs. Nothing."

"You do realize that we will be at this for quite some time, and that we will visit many such space stations and planets?"

"I know. I'll get souvenirs there, too. I want a souvenir for every place we visit."

"We are on a quest, not a pleasure cruise."

"There's no reason we can't make it both. Speaking of which, what's the plan for that? What did you get from all those papers?"

"What do you know of Ragnarok?"

"Absolutely nothing."

Loki explained in as few words as possible before continuing, "It was always spoken of as the end, as the last prophesy. But these pages, more ancient, it seems, than even the prophesy itself, speak of a rebirth. A renewal. A story in which Ragnarok had already happened and cycled into a new phase. A story in which the fires had been forged anew, into a bigger and brighter blaze. Land reconstituted and seas recapturing the tides, of forests virgin…"

Loki stopped in the middle of his speech when he noticed Bucky staring at him, stunned. He supposed he _had_ lapsed into something a little more dramatic than was called for. Simplifying, he summarized, "It calls for a spell. Our quest is not, as we thought, to find a new Asgard. It is to reconstitute Asgard itself."

"Okay" Bucky said blankly. "What do we need to do for that? What did your mom write?"

"There are many pages that I cannot read, and even in the ones I can read, there is much I do not understand."

"How? From what I can tell, you understand every language."

"I am using the All-Speak to translate, but the languages in these texts are too ancient; they vastly predate the magic that created the All-Speak, and are therefore outside its sphere."

"So, you need a dictionary."

"Unlikely to exist for languages this secret and lost. However, if I could find different, more popularly extant texts in the same ancient languages, along with their translations, I could—"

"Back into the translations of your stuff," Bucky said with a nod. "That's smart. Where could we find something like that? How can I help?"

"I have a few ideas," Loki said, pleased with the compliment but a little suspicious of the man's easy-going amenability. Never before had Loki had someone agree to one of his plans with so little push-back. "What is it that _you_ intend to get out of all this?"

"What do you mean?"

"You have no connection to Asgard. It means nothing to you whether or not it is restored, nor whether her people find a new home."

"No, but it sounds like you guys have had a rough time. I know what it's like to be on the run, to feel like you don't belong anywhere anymore."

"Your planet was not destroyed. Your home is not gone."

"You been to Brooklyn lately?"

"No, never."

"Well, it might as well be gone for all that it's what I remember. Not that I could go back there even if I wanted to."

"Because you are a fugitive."

"Yeah. Today's the first time I've felt safe in… in a long time. Not having to look over my shoulder every five minutes. I had it good in Wakanda, but… I couldn't stay there anymore. Sending me off with you was the only idea anyone could come up with. I didn't have any other options."

"I see." Loki had not asked for this man, but he also didn't like being told so directly that _he_ had not been desired. 

"But," Bucky continued, "it's funny how sometimes how things work out. I used to dream about going to space. I read so many books when I was a kid..."

Loki sniffed, and gestured at the filthy, teeming, drab cityscape before them, a far cry from the sleep, shining Hollywood visions of the universe Thor had laughingly described, for Loki's amusement, during quiet evenings on the Statesman. "As you can see, space is very different from Earth's ignorant imagination of it."

"Yeah, it's better," Bucky said, not realizing that his agreement was in fact a disagreement. "I'm really grateful for the opportunity. Looking out for you is the one job they gave me, so you'd better believe I'm going to do it as well as I can to deserve all this."

"Looking out for me? You mean 'keep an eye on me'."

"The two don't have to be mutually exclusive." Bucky gave him a sidelong glance. "Gotta say, I was nervous about getting sent off with a stranger, but… I have a good feeling about this. You and me." 

Loki couldn't understand why Bucky would think that (no, actually, he could, because part of him felt the same way, which he hated).

"We've only just met. I'm sure I'll disappoint you shortly." 

Out of the corner of his eye, Loki thought he saw Bucky mouth, "Wow," to himself. But he kept up the determined friendliness. "You're gonna make me work for it, aren't you? But just you wait. You're going to _love_ me before we're done."

"And here I was thinking you seemed so modest. So rational, so aware and accepting of your powerless, lowly human state. I'm sad to see that I was mistaken."

Bucky raised his helplessly expressive eyebrows a hair, but otherwise kept a straight face. "Even if humans were really that worthless, it's a good thing I'm not so powerless or lowly."

"What does that mean?"

"I thought you said they'd told you about me."

Loki coughed, wracking his brain to come up with what that might mean and how he could save face. Was Bucky some kind of royalty in disguise? It had to be that, for, although muscular, he did not evince more than an extremely fit human's strength (which wasn't much), and he lacked even the use of all his limbs. 

"It doesn't matter what rank you hold. No matter how elevated, humans have never wielded power in the universe, nor been able to hold their own against stronger species. I foresee that _I_ will be spending more time looking after _you_ , not only physically, but in acclimatizing you to the environment."

"Huh," Bucky said quietly, driving Loki mad with the inability to tell whether or not he'd hit the mark. He didn't argue back, but given what little Loki had learned of his personality, that didn't necessarily signify concession. 

"So," Bucky said next, aloud, "I'm guessing that to reconstitute Asgard, we'll need to go to where it used to be. Where's that?"

"It is very far from here. At least a year's journey. But that cannot be the first step. Before heading there, I will need to translate the runes. I'll need to gather ingredients or tools."

"Well, just let me know, and I'll set the navigation," he said, not-so subtly reminding Loki that _Bucky_ was the only one who currently knew how to fly the ship.

He had wit, this human. 

They returned to the docks with their purchases in a silence whose tension emanated more from Loki's side, given how freely Bucky swung his arm and how interestedly he looked at everything around him. Danvers was waiting for them, whistling from her seat on the gangplank of the Statesman. Her face softened into something almost orgasmic when Bucky handed her the meat pie.

"So good," she said between gobbled bites. "Thank you, Bucky Bear."

"No!" Bucky yelled in incomprehensible horror and with a mortified glance at Loki. 

"Bucky Bear?" Loki asked, wondering exactly how close Danvers and Bucky had grown during the time when he'd been in Thor's room. 

"It's nothing," Bucky said quickly, which only piqued Loki's curiosity, especially when he leveled some truly impressive pleading eyes at Danvers, who merely laughed. "The one good thing about outliving everyone you know is outliving shit like that."

"If it makes you feel better," Danvers said, "the last time I heard a mention was in the seventies."

"Thank god." 

"Come on, let me show you what I got you guys," 

With a pang, Loki walked away from the ship that had been his home. It was already being boarded by little brown creatures wearing dark red robes. Loki wanted to smite these strangers, strangers on _his_ stolen ship. But, if all went well, he could reclaim it and lead Asgard, once again, to safety. Once again be the savior. The commemorative plays he would write. The songs! He smiled at his own fancy.

Danvers led them to the end of the port area, where they saw a small, globular ship with guns on each side. It was dark grey with blue war stripes along the sides, and a gun bay at the back. Beside its enormous neighbors in the port, it looked tiny and insignificant, claustrophobic and cheap. Even more than in the fishing village, Loki felt that he had been brought low. 

"Wow," Bucky said, evincing quite the opposite reaction. But then again, he'd already established himself as the sort to find anything impressive. 

"It's called the 'Sunset Swimmer'," Danvers said. "She doesn't look like much..."

"It certainly doesn't," Loki agreed at the same time that Bucky said, "She's a dream."

"...but she's fast and easy to fly. Even better, she's just small enough that she doesn't need strict paperwork."

"That, I like," Loki allowed. 

"I thought you would. Well, boys, that's it. She's all yours. I've gotten them to move all the crates from the Statesman over to here. Bucky here knows everything you need to know to fly her. I even rewrote the instruction manual for you in English. I've gotta get going. Good luck."

She hugged Bucky quite warmly, whispering something that Loki could not make out into his ear. He guffawed—another appealing combination of expression and noise. God, he was exasperatingly… something.

"Thanks for everything," Bucky was murmuring back at her. 

Danvers did not hug Loki, but gave him a respectful, perfectly appropriate nod and smile. "Good luck."

"You coming, Loki?" Bucky asked, stretching out a hand.

Loki didn't take it, but he did follow.

* * *

Loki decided to abandon Bucky, of course, at the first opportunity.

It wasn't that the man was bad company. Quite the contrary. During the week that they spent on the ship before their next stop, he didn't talk too much, amused himself whenever Loki preferred to be alone (which was often), listened with curiosity and attentiveness to all of Loki's stories, and managed the ship with the alacrity and know-how of an admiral. 

It was the last point that ranked Loki most. With every day—or wakefulness period, given the inability to set rhythms according to the revolution of stars and planets—that passed, Bucky appeared more and more at home, in space and with Loki.

The uncustomary familiarity was intolerable, frightening. Loki had never had friends, not really. The only person he had ever taken to like this had been his brother. And he'd spent most of his life trying to _stab_ his brother.

He'd tried, of course, just before deciding to escape the man and this burgeoning friendship, to stab Bucky. If only for the sense of clarity and normalcy it might bring. Unfortunately, in this, as in everything, Bucky had proved a match for him. Quick as lightning—well, more quickly than Loki had thought possible of a man without seidr—Bucky had produced two knives of his own from some mysterious place on his person.

"What the hell? Is this sparring practice or something?" Bucky had asked, his knife as close to Loki's throat as Loki's was close to his.

With a defeated sigh, Loki lowered his knife and lied, "Yes."

"All right. I'm not much for sparring these days, but I wouldn't mind seeing some fancy space moves."

Loki had wanted to stab _himself_ all through the face-saving practice that followed. 

Today, they were stopping at a planet of which Loki had never heard until two days before. Yet another way in which Bucky kept unwittingly showing him up. 

"Why Holspat?" Loki asked upon the approach. 

"They talk about it a lot in 'Post-Orbital Desires'. And it's on the way to wherever we're going that you won't actually tell me about."

Loki squinted. The name sounded familiar. "'Post-Orbital Desires'. Is that the Xandarian program you've been listening to?" 

Loki had heard the voices while walking by Bucky's bunk a few times. A kind of audio drama that Bucky had somehow learned, in their scant few hours in the market of that space station, was all the rage in this part of the galaxy. He'd had Loki haggle for the entire set, and in the many solitary hours of study Loki had granted him, had somehow already picked up enough of the language to follow.

"It's awful trash," Loki said. "You must know that."

From the way Bucky lowered his head and dark lashes to look at his boots, it seemed that he _did_ know.

"But it's good for language practice."

"You aren't listening for the practice. You simply want to know what happens to Moktar and Audralistania."

"I thought it was trash. I thought you weren't listening."

Loki frowned. "I can't help but hear."

"Uh-huh. Sure."

It was moments exactly like that that left Loki certain in his decision to leave. No one should have been able to read him so quickly, so easily. 

The final straw came in the middle of a luxurious shopping center that Bucky said reminded him of the Bund, whatever that was. 

"These products are not local," Loki said, trying to show off his experience in a last gasp at superiority. "They look of a cheapness that comes from the large factories two star systems over, the ones that keep this quadrant of the galaxy in fast fashion and furnishings."

"Nah, it's got this triangle crest on the underside, see? That means it isn't a knock-off." Turning to the store proprietor, Bucky asked, in halting but passable Xandarian, "Four hundred credits? What, you think I was born yesterday?"

Loki sighed. In all his thousand years of life, he had not known about this crest of quality. He had spent so much of his life in the library in Asgard, learning everything he'd thought was important. But suddenly, none of it counted for much, and this man, this human—practically a newborn babe—had eclipsed him. 

Bucky didn't need Loki to exist productively in the universe, nor to fly the ship, nor for company, nor even during stops. It was only Loki who needed him. And that was a state of affairs Loki did not know how to accept. 

So, that was why, while Bucky had his back turned to search the map of the shopping center for somewhere they could eat, Loki slithered away, blending into the pressing, pushing, overly tactile crowd.

Bucky would get over it, Loki told himself as he walked away. People always got over his disappearances, he reiterated, all but muttering the words to himself, even as he remembered all the times that Thor had not gotten over it. 

Once he was safely away, up a flight of stairs and looking down from a balcony, did he turn back to take one last look at Bucky. He saw his erstwhile companion clutching his purchases and looking around for Loki. He didn't spin frantically or call out in desperation—Bucky's paranoia had been too ingrained to make such a spectacle of himself. But even from this slightly elevated angle, Loki could see the tension in his neck, the way his eyes blinked a little too often, the hair that he flipped back over his face, a defense mechanism that Loki had learned to read in the past few days, along with myriad other little details. Bucky was sad, hurt, nervous. 

That touch of weakness, that crack in Bucky's mask of cheerful competency… It was almost enough to make Loki reconsider. 

But he didn't have a chance, because just then he felt a horrible shock. The world went black.

* * *

He woke with sore limbs and a strained back. Whoever had bound and trussed him must have studied at the same school as Valkyrie, for he knew this position. Hands tied behind his back and bottom resting on his heels. It was impossible to rise without the use of his arms. 

All around him were other prisoners, of various species, similarly bound. Or, at least, as similarly as their forms would allow. He took note of the modifications made for his tentacled neighbor. From the cargo hold of prisoners, dismal lighting, and even more offensive smell, Loki could make an educated guess where and what he was: a prisoner on a Ravager ship. 

A horned, green male—the only creature in here with freedom—yawned and stretched near him. Loki measured the man's stupidity by the length of time it took him to locate the source of the itch on his own backside. He chose his speech accordingly.

"You've made a grave mistake," he said grandly. "Those who watch over me will not take my kidnapping lightly."

"Eh?" 

"It would be in your best interest to release me."

"That's what they all say. No one ever comes. People with bounties never _have_ anyone to come."

Loki frowned. It stood to reason that the ravagers had taken him for a reason. They were ruthless, criminal beacons of anti-social behavior, but they were, above all, pragmatism personified. He had never heard of them taking someone just for the fun of it. Which meant that someone, somewhere, had drawn up a contract with Loki's name on it.

"How much has your client offered? I swear to you, I can double it."

The guard yawned again. "Yeah, yeah." 

Loki tried another tactic. He tried transforming himself into something smaller and skinner. But these must have been state-of-the-art bonds, for they stretched and shrank according to his size. There was no slipping out of them.

Understandably confident in his prisoners' security, the guard walked to the room controls and flicked through some kind of menu until something made him nod happily. Soon the room was filled with the sound of conversation.

It took Loki only a moment to recognize the drivel as 'Post-Orbital Desires'. He groaned. 

Nothing happened for an interminable amount of time. Eventually, Loki began to wonder if they would ever be fed, and whether everyone was left to soil themselves when their biological needs could no longer be controlled. Given the smell all around him, he assumed the answer, at least to the latter question, was yes.

He hung his head, a black mood falling over him. He had the universe's worst luck. 

The guard eventually began to nod off (only reasonable, given his choice of entertainment). Loki watched his head bob and shake, watched first the long rifle and then the axe fall from his hands as he slumped in his seat. Soon, the guard was asleep and snoring wetly. 

From a shadow, barely noticeable, something moved. The shape came up behind the guard and pulled the dropped weapons out of reach before binding his arms behind his back, similar to how Loki's arms were bound. Then hands—one of them oddly shiny—wrapped around the guard's head and attached a secure gag to his face. 

As discreet as the figure was, it could not keep the guard from making any noise at all. Even his minor thrashing caught the attention of additional Ravagers in the next room. Five of them rushed in, but the figure shut the door behind them. In an astonishing display of silent, deadly fighting skills, the stranger subdued them all before they had a chance to ring a more robust alarm. 

Whoever this intruder was possessed something the strength and stamina of an Aesir. Loki had not seen such fighting since Thor, and even then, Thor had never been so elegantly silent. 

The figure emerged from the shadows. He put a shiny finger to his lips as he became visible, signaling to all the prisoners to keep quiet. 

It was Bucky. 

Loki stared up at him, longing, possessive, triumphant. Bucky had come for _him_ , would rescue him. He expected Bucky to rush to his side and release his bonds, but he did not. Instead, he released everyone else, starting with the smallest prisoners, the weakest ones. He didn't release all of them; he kept consulting some sort of manifest before releasing anyone.

He resolutely refused to look in Loki's direction or recognize him at all. 

Loki grew desperate, needy. What were all these strangers to Bucky? Why should he care for them first? He craned his neck, desperate to piss, desperate to stretch, desperate for acknowledgement. 

"My ship's docked just underneath this room, just down this escape hatch," Bucky told the quietly grateful little group that he'd freed, even as others, including Loki, pleaded with their eyes and feelers and tongues for freedom. "Crawl down here and you'll drop right into the ship. I'll be right behind you. Not a sound, and we'll be outta here before they even realize I latched on."

Bucky watched his little brood descend the ladder, one by one, lending a hand to the weaker ones. Only when the last ones were waiting their turn did he move to where Loki kneeled so uncomfortably.

"Miss me?" Bucky whispered hotly into Loki's ear while his cool metal arm brushed against Loki's bound hands. 

He closed his eyes and bit his lips, but not even Loki's pride could keep him from nodding.

"Thought so," Bucky whispered again as he fingered the bonds with the shiny, wholly unexpected metal prosthetic. "You know, from what I see on this manifest, the people who paid these Ravagers for you have a pretty good reason to want you handed over. You tried to destroy their planet? Jot… Jotunheim?"

"It was a long time ago."

"The date of grievance is only eight years ago."

"No real harm was done."

"We're gonna talk about this," Bucky said, helping Loki to his feet and leading them, last of all their little band, down the hatch and into their suddenly full ship.

"Only if we also talk about all… this." Loki gestured at Bucky's gleaming arm at the complete lack of sweat from what ought to have been the exertion of taking down six men single-handed. 

"I thought you knew all about me."

"I lied. Obviously."

"Obviously. Look, can you take care of everybody while I fly us out of here?" 

Loki rubbed his wrists and proceeded to turn on his most gracious manner, playing his favorite role: savior-cum-host. He offered food and drink from their stores and showed everyone where the toilets were.

"We cannot keep them all here indefinitely," he said to Bucky once they were safely into hyperspace. 

"I know. I'm just going a couple of star systems over. There's a refugee camp pretty close by. We can drop them off there and ask them to signal for Carol. They'll be able to get transports back to safety."

"Was it wise, setting them free? What if their bounties had been called for just cause?"

"Nah. My Xandarian's still getting up to snuff, but as far as I could tell from the manifest, the only person on our ship whose bounty was for just cause is yours."

"So, why did you rescue me?"

"I told you. I've got one job. Just the one."

Something about Bucky's small smile, even if he could not spare a glance from setting the delicate flight path of escape, told Loki that all was well, that he might be forgiven, and that Bucky might even prove receptive to a little teasing. Lightly, laughingly, he asked, "And do you enjoy your work?"

"I've always liked a challenge. And compared to Steve back in the day? You're a piece of cake."

"How did you find me?"

"I have a tracker on you."

"Where? How?"

"Like I'm going to tell you."

"Why? Did you know I would try to run away?"

"It was pretty predictable," Bucky answered, echoing something Thor had said to him in a seminal moment. Loki had thought he'd changed, but perhaps all changes ebbed and flowed. What surprised him was that Bucky, who had only just met him, had been able to tell.

"I underestimated you," Loki said.

"You don't know me. You haven't even tried to."

"I suppose not."

"Seems like there's a lot I didn't know about you either. Our friends gave us some pretty shitty briefings. I'm thinking we need a reset, you and me. I mean, unless you're going to try to ditch me again, which… Let's be honest. You won't get far. You don't know how to fly a ship. And even if you did, I'm good at tracking people."

"Evidently." 

"So, why'd you do it? Why'd you leave?" 

"You didn't need me."

"Sure, I do," Bucky replied, with a touch of what sounded like hurt, or like pleading, or like need in his voice. He swiveled in his seat to look Loki, who was leaning against the copilot's dash. "How about we start over? I don't know what I did, but…"

"You did nothing. It was I who..." Loki didn't know how he had intended to finish that sentence, and let it drift off. He was too busy thinking about Bucky's vulnerable tone, the hopefulness in his eyes. He had read this wrong, he saw now. All of it. "Once we've dropped these people off, we can reset. Get to know one another properly."

That was all they said on the matter, either then or ever. 

"By the way, since there's a contract out for you," Bucky said later, "you might want to stop wearing that helmet. Makes you stick out like a sore thumb."

"Fair enough."

* * *

Loki bit at his stylus in search of just the right word. It was on the tip of his tongue. But just then, because the universe hated him, his train of thought was interrupted, yet again, by nonsense droning over the ship's speakers. The All-Speak translated the squeaks and burbles into all-too banal meaning. 

"What enormous salt flats!" a recorded voice flatly exclaimed. 

Next, softer, but still clear in Loki's exceptional hearing, came Bucky's repetition of the same phrase, as well as a response. "This is likely due to the annual meteoroid monsoon."

There were more horrifying screeches of metal on metal, followed by some colorful Midgardian swearing (even though sounds tended to meld together in harmonious meaning, Loki had learned, though frequent exposure, that these specific words were either English or Russian). Then more of the recorded voice and responses.

This had been going on for hours. Loki rose from his favorite spot on the ship—the nook above the eating area but below the stairs of the cockpit. He climbed back up to the main floor of the ship, and then tip-toed his way down the hallway, not because he was trying to take Bucky by surprise, but simply to avoid the detritus all over the floor. 

Over the past couple of months, Loki had grown accustomed to living in a small ship like this, with its narrow hallways, cold walls, dark corridors (they remained dark no matter how many lights he had Bucky install). He'd begun to grow fond of the Sunset Swimmer's squat, ungainly shape, its effortful take-offs, the garbled radio that made their communications sound like insults. He had even—almost, but not quite—learned to navigate Bucky's ungodly mess. Tight spaces strewn with souvenirs, tools, clothes, hair ties had slowly started to feel like home. 

He followed the recorded voice to a corner of the ship that Loki had not known a man could wedge himself into. He found Bucky half underneath some sort of plumbing fixture. Loki saw only muscular legs encased in soft leather trousers, two blue socks, one of which had a hole in the big toe, and the lower half of Bucky's shirtless torso.

Loki had hoped to make a suitably dramatic entrance, but with Bucky unable to see him, and unable to hear him over the recording, there was no point. He sat down cross-legged on a nearby ridge and did the next best thing: appreciate the view. 

They'd recently stopped at Xandar, or what was left of it. Not much had remained after Thanos's destruction. But at least one of the tailors to whom Frigga had sent her sons when they came of age remained. Loki had tried to cajole Bucky into an Asgardian wardrobe, with all the gold and gilding and epaulets that Loki had grown up admiring. However, Bucky had preferred cuts evocative of Earth fashions and color schemes, but in the higher-tech fabrics of more advanced civilizations. He'd rejected Asgardian taste as old-fashioned and stodgy. Loki had been offended at the time, but he now admitted, only to himself, that such styles suited Bucky very well.

"What plans do you have for the monsoon moratorium?" the recording asked next.

"My uncle is holding celebrations to view the black hole sacrifices," Bucky replied after repeating.

His accent, Loki had to admit, was flawless. 

"This has to stop," Loki said when his desire for attention began to war with his, well, desire.

Bucky wheeled himself out from under where he'd been working. His face looked like a gegku's with those big goggles. He had attached the thinnest fingered of his arms, likely to more easily screw bolts into hard to reach places. It was one of the many, for all occasions, that the Princess Shuri had built with love, and which General Okoye had included in the various Wakandan trunks that still lined their small hold. 

"What's wrong?" Bucky asked, as the recording, as though trying to prove Loki's point, said, "There will be such paroxysms of flatulence!" 

"Your language tutorials," Loki complained. "How can I write with this drivel interrupting my concentration?"

"Writing? I thought you were translating spells."

Caught, Loki admitted, "I was, but then inspiration for a new scene struck. Only to be derailed by this interminable droning."

"Sorry, I'll put on headphones." Bucky reached for his earplugs, but Loki shook his head.

"I'll still have to hear your portion of these mind-numbing exchanges." Not for the first time, he asked, " _Why_ won't you let me siphon knowledge of the All-Speak into your mind? You would no longer need to study any of these languages! You would have all of them and more—everything—at your fingertips."

Bucky shook his head, for the tenth, twentieth time. "No."

"You do not trust me," Loki said ruefully, because this, even more than the noise, was what he hated most.

"I _like_ learning languages," Bucky replied, which Loki took as a careful evasion of the question. "Always have, even back in the third grade learning French with Miss Calot. Did I tell you she was my first crush?"

"Yes. Twice," Loki seethed, wishing ill on a woman likely long-dead. 

"It's the best way to learn about a place and about people," Bucky continued, "What you do, with your mind translator thing... It isn't real. You're not really understanding. I'll try to keep it down, though. How's the play going?"

"Terribly, as I just told you." 

"Gimme one sec." Bucky wheeled himself back underneath the pipes and banged at something new. He emerged again, covered in grease and sweat, with a bright, triumphant look on his face. "I think that was it."

"What were you working on? The ship has not had any problems."

"You haven't heard the clanking sometimes?"

"Not over your recitations," Loki said, even though, now that Bucky mentioned it, he _had_.

"Well, it should be a lot quieter now. Now, come on. You can tell me about where you got stuck with the play while we eat."

Together, they walked to the eating area. Bucky strode in front, giving Loki an excellent view of the leather trousers snugged tight against his muscular backside. Loki admired the streaks of grime that decorated hard planes of his back for an all-too brief moment before Bucky grabbed a soft blue tee-shirt from where it had been randomly draped on a light fixture. Loki suppressed a sigh—about the mess, about his play, about the monitor hidden in a dark corner into which he banged his head yet again. But mostly about Bucky's unnecessarily old-fashioned rules about being fully clothed at table.

He couldn't pinpoint the moment in which this dissatisfaction, this itch, this stubbornly persistent ache had replaced his initial disdain for Bucky, but it had been growing, in both intensity and hopelessness. And it was _mortifying_. Loki was not supposed to like the person he had been ordered to travel with. He was not supposed to desire someone with whom he had all but been set up. He had been successfully sabotaging such friendships (and more) for longer than he could remember. He refused to be manipulated into this damnable fondness.

Luckily, Loki had long ago mastered the art of dissembling his true feelings with rudeness and non-lethal bursts of violence. Not even Thor had always felt secure in Loki's affection. 

"Maybe I should shower first," Bucky said while his arms were raised to put on the shirt.

"You don't smell so terrible," Loki lied, because he was loath to see Bucky clean himself up. 

"You're crazy." Bucky took another sniff of himself and shrugged, "But if it isn't bothering you... I'm starved. What've you got for us?"

Loki had weaseled his way out of most duties on their ship, but cooking was one of the few he actually did. Mostly, that meant hydrating. He had become an expert hydrator. It involved looking through their stores, popping something into the hydrator, and, spooning it onto the souvenir dishware Bucky had bought on one of their stops. 

From time to time, Bucky refused Loki's contribution and actually cooked, from scratch, with all the cleaning it entailed. His cooking didn't taste very good, even by Midgardian standards, but Bucky radiated such joy while doing it, and his tongue darted out so suggestively with each bite, that Loki half convinced himself that the exertions were worth it. 

And anyway, they weren't _his_ exertions.

Tonight, Bucky settled into one stool and rested his feet upon another, settling in for a very typical one of their evenings. Loki settled in, too, pouring himself some nectar during the forty-five seconds it took for the hydrator to prepare their meal. 

"So, what scenes did you write today?" Bucky asked slowly, in whatever language he'd been studying. He did this sometimes for practice, since it all sounded the same to Loki.

"Nothing extant. I deleted it all," Loki said, poking dejectedly at his meal. "I have lost my voice, my talent. The words resist expression. It's like drawing water from a stone."

"Uh huh," Bucky said between bites, entirely unmoved. "Want me to read it out loud?"

That was what Loki had hoped for. He would never have imagined that, when the Avengers had sent him a minder and a charge all in one, they would also be sending him an incomparable muse. The flatness of his delivery, the stiffness of his hand gestures, his striking looks… He was magnificent. If only they had known one another earlier. Bucky would have been the greatest star of the Asgardian stage. 

"Oh, Loki, will you not accompany me on this frightful task," Bucky read, infusing the words with the kind of questioning confusion only a virtuoso would have thought to add. "For my courage quails without my hammer, and my great limbs shrivel whilst encased in a lady's corset. Shall you be my protector, the lady's maid to my false Freya?" 

"I have fed the goats that draw your chariot, and they are ready to take us to Thrym's castle," Loki recited from memory, "where, by the grace of my shrewd genius, I will restore to you the hammer of your manhood." 

"And then Loki dresses himself and Thor in finer robes than those ever worn by actual women," Bucky muttered, skimming the scene directions, before getting to his next line, which was, "What vengeance I shall wreak once my hammer is restored to me. Currently, I am weak without it, shriveled and vulnerable, but anon shall I call down the storm of my fury. We will succeed, and it will be all your doing, brother, I know it." 

Bucky's dry, slightly disbelieving delivery moved Loki so deeply that he needed to grab the edge of the table for support. Breaking character, he said, "On second thought, I think this came out just right. It sounds much better when you read it than it did in my head. Really, you are so good. You _must_ have been on the stage on Midgard. It is only your modesty that makes you say you were anything but a star. When we succeed in our quest, I will erect the greatest stage on which to perform my work, and will show you off to all of Asgard."

Bucky lowered his head to take another bite, but raised his eyebrows. "Goats?" he asked. "What was that part about?"

"At that time, Thor kept some pet goats—monstrous things, as big as a house, with wide, scaly wings like that of a werefalcon—that pulled a silly little silver carriage through the sky. What larks we had in it," Loki said with a nostalgic sigh.

"Maybe it's a homophone, only sounds like 'goat'," Bucky said, though it sounded more like he was talking to himself, not Loki. Looking up, and louder now, he remarked, "I thought you were going to try writing plays about someone other than yourself."

"What do you mean? This one is about Thor."

"It is? Oh. I, uh, I must have it mixed up with another one you've been working on."

The evening passed pleasantly and quickly as Loki described his plans for the next act, in which Loki enacted his wily plan to trick Thrym into believing Thor really was his bride. Bucky maintained a gratifyingly enthralled expression throughout, watching Loki talk with a hint of a smile playing across his lips.

But then, just as Loki was outlining his ideas for the climax, Bucky yawned. 

"Am I boring you?" Loki felt as though he'd been slapped.

"No. I could listen to you, I mean, this, forever," Bucky replied. "It just feels late."

The ache in Loki's lower back, a result of sitting for too long on these too-short stools, suggested that more time had passed since they'd cleaned their plates than he'd realized. 

"How much longer until we get there?" Bucky asked.

"We had fifteen hours left when I came to find you," Loki said as he craned his neck to check the navigation computer over the sink. "Now ten hours. We _have_ been at table for awhile." 

"Just enough time left for some shut-eye."

Bucky cleaned up, as he always did, and performed his obsessive little checks around the ship. Loki followed him, mocking him all the while, until his foot pressed down on something slippery and round. He went flying, legs over head, and landed hard on his arse. He groped around for the dangerous and offensive item until he felt something that was about the size of one of Bucky's Wakandan beads, only fuchsia-colored.

"Oh, sorry," Bucky said. "I don't know how that got on the floor."

"Where did you get this?" Loki asked slowly, not believing that he had tripped over _this_.

"A couple planets ago? It's just one of my souvenirs. The guy had a whole jar of them, all different colors and sizes. He told me it was a good replacement for the missing piece in that game you like so much, but it turned out to be a load of baloney. It doesn't work the way the other pieces work."

"No, it would not work, for it does something else. Something much more valuable. This is a short-range transporter module."

"A what?"

"It moves its owner very slightly in space, no matter the barriers in the way. They are incredibly rare. I cannot believe you accidentally bought one in a market."

Bucky shrugged. "I thought I'd surprise you with the game piece."

Everything else about this period of wakefulness had been utterly typical for them, from Bucky's language practice and tinkering, to Loki's writing, to the pleasant mealtime and easy conversation. As at the end of every typical wakefulness period, Loki settled into his bunk, separated from Bucky's by a hallway and two thin metal doors, and readied himself for Bucky's night terrors. They were always worse in hyper-space; the risk of crashing into objects unplanned for in the route trajectory kept Bucky anxious. And an anxious Bucky, Loki had quickly learned, was a Bucky prone to reliving horrors.

Ever since their 'reboot', as Bucky called it, Loki had put together a fair idea of what exactly had caused these nightmares. He'd learned to read between the lines of Bucky's stories, and to pay attention to horrifying little details that anyone else would most certainly _not_ have glossed over the way Bucky did. Loki had also observed odd little quirks of Bucky's that, before, he would have dismissed as human eccentricity; however, now knowing some of the context, Loki felt certain that many of them had been borne out of the worst torture and hardship he had ever imagined—on Earth or anywhere. 

The picture he was slowly putting together of Bucky's past and of his character was almost enough to make him want to lessen his focus on his own traumas. Almost. Not really. It didn't help that Bucky was such a good listener, so lacking in judgement and so full of patience. He never coddled, but he also never told Loki to hush. Instead, he'd encouraged Loki to put more of his anguish into his plays. Many were the hours they spent scribbling—Bucky in the notebooks he bought everywhere he could find one, and Loki on his tablet. Sometimes Bucky even read excerpts to him, about memories from his childhood. 

There were notebooks that he kept under lock and key, away from Loki's prying, secured with advanced technology that not even magic could break. It upset Loki greatly to know that Bucky was keeping something back. How much, Loki could not even tell. He knew he had not done much to gain Bucky's most intimate trust, but he resented not having yet gained it. 

Tonight, Loki fell asleep faster than he'd expected, and slept deeply, but soon enough, he was awoken by the usual whimpering and thrashing coming from the other room.

Loki had learned not to intervene in person. The one time he had, Bucky had grasped Loki about the neck, on the scar that Thanos had left, and tossed him against the wall with all the strength that Loki had first witnessed in the Ravagers' prison. The part of Loki that had always liked a bit of rough treatment—not that he'd ever admit it to anyone—hadn't minded the slightly sprained wrist. But Bucky's tragic remorse, self-loathing making the tendons in his neck throb, had been so extreme that Loki decided not to risk it again. 

So, tonight, as he often did, Loki sent a projection through the walls. Loki made the double sit beside Bucky on the bed, from where he watched Bucky through its eyes.

Bucky slept on his side. A single thick lock of long hair had flopped over his cheek. Loki found himself most stirred by Bucky in situations such as earlier, when he'd been covered in the grease and grime of the ship's working parts, or, most memorably, a couple of weeks earlier, when an altercation with some light elves who remembered Loki from centuries before (and not for good reasons) had left Bucky with his hair mussed, streaks of blood across his chin, and the vest Loki had recently picked out for him shredded to bits. Loki had liked the vest before, but found its torn state—and the flashes of abdominal muscles it afforded—an improvement.

That, yes, was Bucky at his most appealing, but Loki enjoyed him in these peacefully unconscious moments, too. 

If only they could last more than a couple of minutes at a time. 

Loki wished he had met Bucky first, and had been the one to heal him. He could have done it with magic, he was sure of it. He wished that Bucky had had a chance to think of Loki and his magic with the rapt, awestruck, desperately loyal gratitude with which he spoke of the princess Shuri and her Midgardian science. He wished that Bucky could trust him with his mind as he had trusted his Wakandan friends—trust him enough to let Loki in, to this most intimate of places—to grant him the All-Speak and to perform the dream-magic that might alleviate these nightmares. And to read his damn notebooks. But, for all the fitful, oddly easy camaraderie they were coming to share, Bucky's mind was the one thing he would not open to Loki. Well, there was another thing he would not open either, but, unlike Bucky's mind, Loki had not asked for it. He had no intention of asking and didn't dare hope. 

And so, Loki was left trying to invent ways of waking Bucky out of these nightmares. He made his methods as annoying as possible, both to vent his frustration at being shut out, and also because such nightmares so often interrupted his sleep. Tonight, he leaned forward until his mouth was but an inch from Bucky's upturned ear, wishing that the duplicate were tangible, real enough to lick the pale shell and blow the hair from his eyes.

And then he began to recite a truly terrible limerick. Groan-worthy filth about fishermen in a rowboat that leaked… in multiple ways.

Bucky's nose began to twitch, and at the closing rhyme, he groaned himself awake. He opened his eyes and flinched to find Loki so close. He lifted his hand slightly and nodded when it went right through Loki's neck. He turned away from the duplicate and looked at the door, his usual silent invitation for the real Loki to come in.

"Where do you come _up_ with this stuff?"

"The rhymes come easily," Loki lied. He feigned an ease at this delightful new poetic form to which Bucky had introduced him, but in reality, he spent a decent chunk of the time he said he was playwriting sweating over the rhythms.

"It works, though. Better than lullabies do. Thanks. It ought to be annoying—"

"It's meant to be annoying. I was in the middle of a very nice dream when your screams pierced my eardrums—"

"But it makes me feel better," Bucky finished at the same time. When he realized what Loki had just said, he continued with, "Sorry."

"It was time to get ready anyway. Though, I will try to come up with something even more irritating for next time."

Bucky smiled the wry little half-smile that had done a lot of work to endear him to Loki. 

By the time they reached the cockpit, the computer had already begun the hyperdrive shutdown sequence. The purple space-scape slowed down to crisp black and whites. Soon, the ship slid into the destination quadrant. 

They flew from the exit point to the coordinates that Bucky had set, but the promised beacon did not lead their way. 

"I thought you said this was a star," Bucky said, sounding disappointed.

"That's what I've always been told. Star-fired forges that never cool."

"Maybe it's hotter than it looks, then."

However, once the rush of the engines died down and they opened the door, it became clear that the place was quiet.

Bucky had landed the ship on what should have been the entrance to the central forge. The towers Loki had read of in books and heard about in stories at Odin's knee were all there, even though they did not smoke as he'd been promised. 

"This is so strange," Loki admitted. "I see absolutely no one."

"Maybe we just need to look harder. They're dwarves, so it stands to reason they might be hard to see," Bucky replied.

"What are you talking about?" Loki asked, confused, because what Bucky said made absolutely no sense.

"What do you mean, 'what'?"

"I don't understand it," Loki said, mostly to himself. "There is no dust, no sign of rust or long disuse. It is as though operations ceased only recently."

"Maybe they're on vacation."

Loki shook his head. "Legend has it that the dwarves and rock trolls work round the clock, in seamlessly organized shifts for maximum efficiency. Even in the deadest of night, these pathways should be bustling with industry. Dwarves should be moving molten jewels and refined metals from the mines to the refiners to the forges."

"Legends tend to be a crock of shit."

Loki frowned. He had spent much of his childhood dreaming of visiting Nidavellir and coming back with a weapon of his own. But he had never found a secret passageway, nor been allowed transport via Bifrost. The glowing forges, heated by stars and the deepest, pre-universal magic, had captured his imagination. Favorite amongst the tales was the one about how the universe itself had begun in what was now the crucible of the central forge, a tiny spark, a vat of fire... something like that... which had agitated and sparked outwards, growing and flying and cooling. To look directly into that bright original vat was something no one could do and live.

Even as a youth, he had written off such stories as fancy, but since receiving Frigga's research, he had begun to put a little more stock in the tales.

The hope of truth in the tall tales was what had brought Loki to Nidavellir today. It was just his luck that only the vestiges of a one-time truth greeted him, instead of the real thing.

He and Bucky walked through the lonely streets and poked their heads into the empty workrooms. Eventually, they reached the very center of the complex. For the first time since landing, they heard a noise other than their own breath and footfalls.

Loki summoned his daggers to his hands and Bucky readied his own knives and cocked his vibranium rifle. They naturally moved closer, back pressed to back, and circled round as a single unit, looking for threats. 

However, for all their preparatory stance, something struck them and sent them flying like a couple of kicked pebbles. A piece of engraving equipment interrupted Loki's trajectory and diverted him painfully back to the ground. Looking up, he saw Bucky land in a nearby tangle of wires. Of their attacker, he could see nothing at all. 

"Are you all right?" Bucky called, worried, even though, from all the way over here, Loki could see that _Bucky_ had suffered the greater hurt.

Loki staggered over to where Bucky lay bleeding from where a couple of the ragged wire edges had scraped his neck. "Are you all right?"

"I'll live." 

Thoroughly angry now, Loki decided to go on the offensive. "Who goes there? Announce yourself," he shouted.

"Who are _you_?" a booming yet plaintive voice asked.

"It is customary when making introductions to look each other in the face," Loki retorted. "Show yourself and then we will tell you who we are."

Bucky, who had almost finished extricating himself from the wires, squeezed Loki's hand with approval at this bravado speech. "Nice," he said. 

A dwarf emerged from the shadow of a smithing tower.

"Jesus Christ," Bucky breathed, eyes bugging out of his head. He fell back into the vat of wires. 

"You have the look of an Asgardian about you," the dwarf said, addressing Loki.

"By design," Loki muttered to himself.

"Not the time, Loki," Bucky whispered, still staring, too uncharacteristically terrified to get back up.

"It is I, Loki of Asgard," Loki proclaimed, for he recognized the dwarf's crest from the storybooks. It signified that they were speaking with a member of the foremost house of dwarves. 

"Loki? Odinson?"

"Yes," Loki announced. It was the first time anyone had addressed him as such since Odin had renamed him. "Am I right in guessing that you are Eitri?"

"I am." Eitri, who had been kneeling by the tower, now rose to his full height. 

Loki saw Bucky, out of the corner of his eye, doing something wholly unexpected: he quailed. For the first time, fear lurked behind his eyes and he stepped back. Bucky, who had faced so much with little more than a lashing of sarcasm, gave off the scent of fear. 

"What the hell..." he muttered.

"Pull yourself together, man," Loki said, holding Bucky's flesh wrist to keep him close, and wondering what in the world had gotten into him. "Eitri is a friend. A long-standing friend of Asgard." 

"I thought you said we were meeting a dwarf."

"That is what I am," Eitri said, with a hint of confusion and an even bigger helping of offense.

This was going badly. Loki didn't know what had gotten into his friend. Bucky had never behaved so rudely. Never before had he given Loki true cause to feel embarrassed for him.

"Who is your companion, Loki Odinson?" Eitri asked. He used both hands to pick Bucky up and raise him high enough to inspect him. 

Only now, watching, did Loki realize something was wrong with Eitri's hands. Something that it was almost too dark to quite make out. 

"What are you?" Eitri asked Bucky.

"A famed warrior," Loki answered for him, trying to build Bucky up to make up for his rudeness. "The Winter Soldier." 

From above, Bucky shot Loki a dirty look; he had never introduced himself as such.

"He is rather small to be a famed anything. Whereby did you come this craftsmanship?" Eitri asked, examining Bucky's arm.

"Midgard," Bucky gasped.

"Impossible."

"Put me down and I'll tell you all about it."

"No," Loki argued as Eitri complied. "Eitri, we need you to tell _us_. Tell us what happened here."

As soon as his feet were back on the ground, Bucky ran to Loki's side. After weeks of feeling outclassed by Bucky's effortless comfort in every scenario, it was gratifying to see Bucky out of his depth and in need of Loki's abilities and care. Gratifying, even if the cause was mystifying; there was nothing about Eitri to have occasioned such panic.

"He's a giant!" Bucky whispered. "Why is he a giant?"

"No, he's a dwarf. Now hush."

Between sobs, Eitri poured out the whole story. Loki had assumed Thanos had had something to do with it (Thanos had a lot to do with _everything_ troubling people in the universe right now), and he was correct, but not in the exact way that he'd expected. Thanos had come for the gauntlet that Bucky had mentioned seeing in Wakanda. He had forced Eitri to forge it, and then killed all the other dwarves—a more drastic measure than his usual halving—and bound Eitri's hands in metal as additional punishment.

"That's rough luck," Bucky said, staring empathetically at the misshapen lumps. He seemed to have calmed down during the dwarf's story. He no longer stiffened against Loki's side. Nor did he hold his knives quite so tightly.

"So, if you have come hoping we might forge you a weapon, I am afraid that I cannot help you. Not with the wreckage of my hands, not with the star put out, not with all my brothers dead. The forges of Nidavellir are closed forever."

Loki's disappointment grew as the story went on. As the son of Nidavellir's most important customer, he had so hoped to show this place off. He'd hoped to finally be able to display his knowledge of the universe, and let Bucky see him treated like intergalactic royalty he was. 

"A bit dramatic," Loki muttered, as Eitri wound down his tale of woe.

"You're one to talk," Bucky replied.

"We have not come for weapons, though I will admit that I often dreamed of one, a signature forged by the hands of the great Eitri." Loki looked at Eitri's stumps and grimaced; his life was nothing if not one long disappointment.

"Jesus, Loki, don't rub it in. Poor guy."

"What _have_ you come for then?"

"I have reason to believe that you store here books of forge magic. Ancient texts containing knowledge and spells to shape the universe and to continue the story of Ragnarok."

"Ah, so it is time," Eitri said with portent.

"Time for what?" Loki asked.

"Time for the next cycle to begin. This is not the first time these texts have been requested."

"When was the last time?" Bucky ventured.

"Some time after the last Ragnarok."

Finally, here was someone who knew, who could confirm that what Frigga had prophesized—had historicized—was true. There _had_ been a previous Ragnarok, a previous cycle.

"Are they still here?"

"Yes. I will take you to them."

Eitri pathetically tried to light a torch, but his non-existent hands could not get the match to catch. Bucky took pity on him and said, "Come on, Loki. Help him out. Make a light or something." 

Loki called upon his magic and created a warm glow that Eitri used to lead them to a room at the far end of the forge. Eitri smashed the brittle locks with his metal hands. All along the walls were meticulously carved words in the ancient languages of magic, from the dawn of time. Loki recognized the symbols from many of his pages. 

"What is this place?"

"The room of rebirth. The inscription of Nidavellir's purpose, written down for us by the Celestials."

"Can you translate it?"

"No, but someone once did, into Elvish." Eitri rooted around on a shelf and pointed to a book that he could not grasp. "But the originals exist only here, on these walls."

Loki frowned. He did not relish the idea of sitting here, in a Nidavellir devoid of glamour and dwarves and all the things that had made it a legend, in order to work on the translations. It would lengthen the quest considerably if he could not work on the spells while shortening the distance between himself and the remains of Asgard.

"I've got an idea." Bucky abruptly took off at a run back to the ship.

"Is he all right?" Eitri asked, baffled by such strange behavior. 

"Not really," Loki admitted, staring fondly after Bucky's receding shape. "But he normally does a better job of faking it."

"Is he truly just a mortal?"

"Not anymore. He has become something much more."

Bucky soon returned with something Loki had not seen since Norway: an iPhone.

"Whom are you calling?" Loki asked, cringing again at Bucky's uncharacteristic rudeness.

"No one. I got it for the camera."

"I see. Excellent thinking." 

Loki directed the shots. It took them almost until the battery needed recharging to get it all photographed, but they did. 

"You will destroy these images as soon as you have completed your task," Eitri said before they took their leave. It was not a question.

"Yeah, of course," Bucky promised, to Loki's disappointment. 

"And one last thing before you leave, Loki of Asgard."

"What is it?"

"I have had something waiting for you for a long time. Something your father commissioned long ago when you were but a child."

"My father?" Loki shook his head. "My father told me that I was unworthy of a weapon from Nidavellir. My father told me I was unworthy of even visiting this place."

"Your father was right. But unworthiness is not a permanent quality, nor is it defined in the same terms for all people. You are here now, are you not? And I am offering you a weapon of Nidavellir."

Eitri led them to another building. He peered in the darkness at various trunks, trying to read faded inscriptions.

"This one," he said, pointing to one in a corner. "The trunk will open and the weapon will come at your call, if you be worthy of it."

Loki approached and slowly lowered his hand towards the lid. All he could think of was the time he had traveled to Midgard and failed to budge Mjolnir. Surely, he would fail again and humiliate himself in front of Bucky and Eitri. He tried to think of his acts of heroism towards the people of Sakaar and of Asgard. He willed images of himself leading people into the Statesman, and onto safety. He tried to summon ideas of 'worthiness', but the images that _actually_ came to mind—extended beyond his mind, to form shadowy images before him, like memories given form by some other power—were of how meekly he had agreed to exile and this quest when Heimdall and Valkyrie had said his presence endangered the Asgardians' continued welcome on Midgard. Another shadowy recreation of the last time he had agreed to 'Get Help'. The times on the Statesman when he had lied to their people in order to allow Thor to slip away to his room for some much-needed rest. 

The images swished in and out of existence, faster and faster, and then the trunk opened with a swoosh. A gleaming sword floated out of it and into Loki's hand. The jewels beveled into the serpent-shaped hilt looked like emeralds but were, if Loki remembered his legends correctly, were actually seeds from the depths of Musepelheim's seas, where jewels grew like fruit in the boiling water, soft and sweet and malleable.

"What is this?" he asked, awed.

"It is Laevateinn. A sword with a blade smithed by the dwarves of Nidavellir, welded to an ancient hilt dating back to the earliest days of the universe. A weapon worthy of legend." 

Loki grasped it from the air where it floated. The weight of the thing immediately made his arm drop painfully. And yet, he marveled at it. "And… what does it do?"

"It's a sword. It does the usual sword things. Stabbing and such," Eitri said, obviously finding Loki a bit simple.

"Nothing else?" Loki had expected more.

"The ancient hilt contains a piece of the Stone of Creation."

"The original firmament of the universe." Loki looked down at the hilt. "Around which powerful realms were built. I read of this as a boy. It was said that a piece of this stone lay at the center of the oldest roots of Yggdrasil."

Bucky had been nodding throughout, though his furrowed brow suggested a lack of comprehension. "What does that mean?"

"I will need to translate the texts to confirm, but my guess is that we will need it to replace the foundation that Surtur destroyed." Loki looked up at Eitri. "You told me what it _has_ , but you have not told me what else it _does_."

"It functions as Mjolnir did for Thor. It focuses your power. Corrals the chaos."

"What does that mean?" Loki asked, because as far as he knew, chaos was not power, not in the way Odin and Thor had possessed power. 

"You'll have to discover that for yourself. But do it soon, for I guess that you will find it necessary to achieve your goal."

"How did I know that would be the answer?" Loki sighed.

* * *

Bucky put his weight on his front foot yet leaned backwards, thrusting his sword in front of him in a way that simply begged for a disarming maneuver. He also held his metal hand stiffly behind his back in a way that no one did and which looked deeply uncomfortable. 

"En garde!" he exclaimed, rather nonsensically. 

"What in the world are you doing?" Loki asked from where he lounged on the sand nearby. Their lunch had been a large one, and he was still digesting. 

"I'm challenging you to combat," Bucky explained.

"You are?"

"Yeah, this is how you do it."

"No, it isn't."

"It's how Errol Flynn did it."

"Well, Errol Flynn must not have lived very long, because this sort of idiocy is how warriors get killed. Your stance is ludicrous. You're open to about fifteen different attack styles."

Frustrated, Bucky lowered his weapon and stood normally again. "We don't normally have this kind of room. We need to figure out how your sword works."

"Can you wait another twenty minutes?"

Bucky grumbled but complied. He usually complied with Loki's requests, except for the times when he wordlessly did exactly what he wanted, never mind Loki's objections. He sank back into the soft sand and reached for another blue meat patty; the ones Danvers had liked so much turned out to have distribution in this galaxy, too.

They had left Nidavellir months ago. In that time, they had made significant progress in translating the spells and lore around Ragnarok. Bucky's polyglot talents had come in handy. It was he who had been able to draw upon similarities and triangulate meanings based on his understanding of many different languages around the universe. With slow work and dedication, they had recently finished translating most of the spells and fables, with only a few left to go. Loki now knew where they needed to go, what they needed to obtain, and what words needed to be recited to create the proper settings for the process of renewal. However, what he did _not_ yet understand was the actual process of making it all happen. He could tell that the sword had something to do with it as well, but what, he had no idea. Loki worried about all this, very loudly and in grand language, but Bucky kept assuring him that together, they would figure it out soon enough.

Another area in which they had not made much progress was in understanding how to wield Laevateinn—as itself, and not simply as part of a spell. Unlike Mjolnir, which Thor had said weighed very little in his hands, the sword was _heavy_. Too heavy for him to lift properly. Every time he touched it, Loki felt thrown back to his youth, when he'd been fast but too skinny. To a time before he'd grown into his present height and lean muscle. No matter how dangerous a warrior he'd ended up becoming in adulthood—certainly deadly enough to have shared his brother's victories—he still hated thinking of his weak beginnings. 

For a sword that had apparently been magically crafted for his strength and worthiness, Laevateinn certainly made him feel the opposite of both of those qualities.

To make matters worse, Bucky kept urging him to try harder, to practice wielding it, not realizing that, even more than usual, Loki hated being reminded of his weak beginnings in front of _Bucky_.

"What did you say the ancient name for this place was, again?" Bucky asked. 

"Ginnungagap."

Bucky repeated the word slowly, savoring it almost as much as the lunch he'd just eaten. "It's pretty here. Prettier than any other place we've visited. It reminds me of Piedmont. But more purple."

"It is exactly as I remember it."

Bucky moved a little closer, dragging the edge of the picnic blanket with him and kicking a little sand onto the fabric, but Loki didn't mind. Neither did he mind the strong scent of spice on Bucky's breath. Not when the lavender-colored light was striking Bucky's arm just so, and not when he was lax and loose and half-naked from the swim he'd just taken. Not when he looked so beseechingly up at Loki from long-lashed eyes. 

Loki knew that look: Bucky wanted a story. 

"What shall it be?" Loki asked. "A scene from one of my plays?"

"Uh, what about just a straight story? About a time you were here before."

Loki wanted to feel hurt that Bucky didn't desire Loki's more formal words, but, deep down, he had come only to like his plays when recited and acted by someone _else_ , by Bucky most of all. So, without complaining, he settled in, as close as he dared to Bucky's still-drying chest and hair.

"You should write that. Just like how you told it. You should put it in your plays like that."

"But such cadences as we use in normal speech run counter to literary rules. That is not the correct style."

"Since when do you care about rules and correctness?"

Loki had to admit he had a point, but to break with the literary traditions would be bold, even for him. "I'll think about it."

Bucky suddenly stood. He pulled Loki to his feet in one smooth motion and handed him Laevateinn. 

(At least Bucky found it heavy, too. Loki would have died of mortification if Bucky had held it with ease.)

Bucky resumed his ridiculous fencing stance. "Enough stalling. Let's go. We're not going to hit anything, and we're done with lunch. You're out of excuses."

Loki _had_ been making excuses for not learning how to wield the sword. It all felt so stupid. Who was the foe? What was the enemy? It wasn't Thanos; word had come, via the infrequent radio contact Bucky maintained with Danvers, that Thanos was dead. 

Eitri had offered Bucky a wondrous variety of magical weapons, all of which Bucky had refused with tired eyes and a firm, infuriating, "Nah, I'm good." In the end, Loki had been the one to request additional swords and daggers—regular ones, whose quality may have been higher than your standard smith, but without any of the 'extras' associated with Nidavellir's craft. Bucky evinced very little interest in fighting, and only picked up his sword as a means of nagging Loki into using his. 

Their sparring took them up and down the sandy beach, and even into the warm water a few times. But it ended as it always did, with Loki's arms giving out and dropping the sword. The only difference was that, this time, he was barefoot and almost stabbed his foot with it. 

Loki collapsed, taking the sword with him. He sprayed sand into the crevices of his armour. Bucky collapsed beside him, a little too close for Loki's equilibrium, as usual. They both lay on their sides, looking at one another. They were lying so close together that, if Loki had thought any good would come of it, he could have leaned in a little closer and kissed him.

But nothing good _would_ come of trying, not when Loki had just failed, miserably, to demonstrate strength or worth or hardiness. 

Bucky stared all down the length of Loki, starting with his defeated eyes, his panting mouth, down to the serpent hilt of the sword that rested on the ground near his groin. He reached out, so tentatively. Loki held his breath, wondering where the usually delicious coolness of Bucky's hand would land—whether on his arm, or, hopefully, somewhere on his bare skin. Loki closed his eyes and twitched in anticipation. 

He heard a sigh, and then, in the _most_ disappointing result, felt Bucky's pat him on the shoulder. His metal fingers clinked on Loki's metal epaulets, eliciting absolutely no physical contact. Bucky patted him on the shoulder as he would have patted a small child. His face was too close. His eyes were too bright. Loki felt dizzy even though he was already lying down.

"Hey, it's all right," Bucky said, with what was meant to be comfort but came out choked and stilted and… something odd that Loki didn't know how to read. 

Loki didn't know what _Bucky_ had to feel awkward about. _He_ wasn't the one unable to use his own, magically forged weapon.

"It's useless," Loki complained. He shrugged Bucky's hand off him, ignoring Bucky's hurt reaction. "You'll need to brush your teeth when we get back on the ship. You stink of meat patties."

Bucky rolled onto his back and covered his face with his hands, likely to block the glare of the young star that lit this planet. It was a minute before he spoke. When he did, it was through his fingers and after a few deep breaths. "Maybe we're going about this all wrong. Maybe the sword isn't for fighting with."

"It's a sword. What else are you supposed to do with it?"

"Thor's hammer was meant to control and direct his power, right? The… hammering… could have been a side benefit."

"That doesn't make any sense. My power, such as it is, doesn't work like that. There _is_ no direction. Chaos is the opposite of direction."

"What about the words on the sword hilt?" Bucky recited, from memory, the inscription they had translated. "Cleaving in cutting, nothing changing. Contrary chaos doth succeed double in negated despair, where heart's blood is harder than stone."

"It's utter nonsense meant to sound nice in the original rhyme," Loki said. "That, or there's a lost idiom necessary to comprehension that we will never learn. I tell you, the sword is merely the tool. It is the spells alone that matter."

"It's gotta mean something," Bucky insisted, as he always did.

Loki rubbed the sand off himself and stood up. "I'm going for another swim before we head back to the ship. Are you coming?"

"I'm okay here."

Loki enjoyed the waves, and remembered splashing with Thor throughout his swim. He emerged again, sometime later, feeling refreshed, both in body and mind. He found Bucky where he left him, lost in thought and staring at Laevateinn with an intense seriousness. His face glowed as though he'd just seen sublimity in the hilt of Loki's sword. 

"It _is_ a lovely sword, for all that I cannot wield it," Loki said pleasantly as he approached.

Bucky looked up in a daze. "Huh?"

"What has come over you? Are you all right?"

Bucky smiled a little secret smile to himself. "Never been better."

* * *

Wearing only his underpants, Bucky rifled through the trunk that held his clothes. "Is there a dress code at this place?" 

"There is. Allow me." Loki plucked an ensemble Bucky had bought during a recent mission in the City of Omnipotence. He next moved to the case that held all of Bucky's arms. He picked out one in matte vibranium, the one with the subtlest detailing. 

Loki, of course, was wearing his usual armour, though without the helmet that Bucky had said, quite a long time ago, at this point, made him a target. He helped Bucky attach the arm, and then sat on one of the other trunks while Bucky dressed.

"I'll probably be out of practice," Bucky mused. "The last time I went dancing was during the war."

"I wouldn't have thought opportunities existed in the trenches you've told me about."

"We were on leave, so not in the trenches. There was a little village in Southern France that Steve and I stopped at for a night on our way to a Hydra base. There was a little café with some old guys and girls." Bucky got a wistful look on his face, as he always did when reminiscing about nights with Steve. "They put the radio on really loud and we cleared all the tables to make room. Not a real dance club, but it was fun." 

"Well, this should definitely eclipse that," Loki said proudly. "Kritnal is anything but an impromptu village diversion. It is the pre-eminent pleasure planet for the wealthiest, most well-connected beings of the universe. We shall be surrounded by luxury of the highest extravagance."

"As long as the music's good, I'll be happy," Bucky replied. "I just hope we can afford it."

"We have made much progress. We deserve a splurge."

"That kind of talk is what makes me want to check our accounts."

The entire planet of Kritnal had been taken over by the resort, so hospitality began as soon as they entered the atmosphere. At landing, liveried Skrull, shapeshifted into a variety of attractive forms, took control of all ships and flew them on a continent-sized parking lot. This left guests free to disembark right away and check into their chosen lodging. 

At first glance, everything remained as Loki remembered. The glistening buildings, the warm water and green sand, colored that way because it complemented the majority of epidermal textures of its most common clientele.

"We should temper our expectations," Loki said as he ignored Bucky's reluctance to hand the controls of their ship to the valet. "Given the tenor of life since Thanos, the level of debauchery and excitement these days will likely be lower than when Thor and I used to visit. Fewer orgies."

"What."

"We'll probably have the place to ourselves," Loki continued.

"No, I meant, tell me more about the orgies."

"I honestly don't remember much. Thor didn't mean to seek them out, but he always got pulled in, and insisted that I join."

Despite his assumptions of it being a kind of 'off-season', the lobby of the hotel was as packed as Loki had ever seen it. The clientele, who came from far-flung galaxies to indulge in pleasure, had not changed, either in diversity nor numbers.

"Can't imagine it getting much more crowded than this," Bucky noted. 

Loki had hoped to get the suite he and Thor had always booked. They had always been lavished with the most attentive service. But today, the attendant at the front desk told him the rooms had all been booked. 

"We can offer you a suite overlooking the valley."

Loki scoffed. "We both know the valley views are sub-par. Do you know who I am?"

The purple biped looked at the form Loki had filled out. "Loki Odinson."

"Prince of Asgard. Heir to the Realm Eternal. Protector of…"

"Didn't Asgard blow up? It doesn't exist anymore. I have a note from management that we are no longer to honor your membership in the priority club. But I can offer you a suite overlooking the valley."

Loki was about to explode. He could feel his heartrate rising, and was already summoning all the dark magic at his disposal when he felt Bucky's hand on his bicep. Bucky stepped forward with a charming smile. 

"A suite over the valley sounds great. Thanks."

Loki was too angry to bother visiting the room. He sent their paltry luggage up with the porters and left to find amusements. 

"You shouldn't have put your real name down on that form, or said it so loudly," Bucky said. "The ravagers could come back. The contract's probably still active." 

"We are safe from ravagers here. Kritnal has always kept out riff raff like them."

"Maybe that's why they didn't let us have the presidential suite, or whatever it's called. _I'm_ riff raff. I'm nobody."

"No, you aren't. You're spe—"

"I'm not the Winter Soldier. Not anymore. I never wanted to be. And if I'm not that, I'm just a hundred-year-old man who was too stupid to die when he was supposed to, and who now can't even die like a normal person."

Loki wanted to argue, but he couldn't think of anything safe to say. Bucky was special to _Loki_ , but he could understand why this fact might fail to impress. So, even though he hated the sad frown that settled on Bucky's face, he let the conversation drop.

Kritnal used the latest technology in land and sea transport to move its guest between the various themed continents, each specializing in a different form of leisure, and each inspired by famed landscapes from around the universe. Hopping from party to party took only minutes.

"I think you'll enjoy the venue I've picked out. It used to be a favorite of Thor's. Many were the evenings we spent mocking its quaintness."

"Okay," Bucky said, clearly not understanding, but indulging Loki all the same.

When they alighted the transport on a pretty beach, Bucky understood. 

"You've gotta be kidding me," he groaned.

Everything remained exactly as Loki remembered it. Half of a coliseum stood at the edge of the shore, opening out to the dyed blue water. At the center, where the gladiators of lore would have fought, had this been a real Roman coliseum, was the dance floor. A handy line down the middle separated the bipeds from the tentacular so that no one accidentally got a boot or sucker in the eye. 

They had not been able to get Loki's preferred room, but at least they were still able to secure a booth in the stands. 

"This is ridiculous," Bucky said as he took their plush seats overlooking the dance floor. "I thought no one went to Earth. How did they know enough to copy this?"

"The kind of people who would start a resort like this are the kind who would travel to banned planets such as yours. But, as you can see, they visited only some centuries ago. This club is still billed as being in the 'latest Terran style'."

Bucky laughed, the full-bodied, all-in laugh that Loki had come to relish eliciting. "They should see the clubs in Berlin. An alien copy would fit right in."

"I thought you hadn't been dancing since the war."

The smile that lingered after the laugh faded. "Wasn't there to dance."

Thankfully, the waitress appeared in front of them to take their orders. The Coliseum Club had always aimed for realism by employing Skrulls impersonating humans for its waitstaff. However, now that he knew a little more of Earth, Loki could see that the eyes and noses were a bit off, like someone's description of a human handed down through hundreds of years and gone awry.

"What'll you have?" she asked.

"Whatever's most popular," Bucky immediately replied, as he always did. Even after a year, he had not lost one whit of enthusiasm for experiencing life as it was lived on every planet and space station at which they stopped. That mentality remained even in a place as false and touristed as Kritnal.

"What are you, if you don't mind my asking," the waitress said, a little unprofessionally for Loki's tastes. The accompanying hungry, lizard-like stare she leveled at Bucky was even more unprofessional.

"I'm hu—" Bucky began to answer, but then he stopped himself. "It's complicated."

"It usually is, sweetheart," the waitress said. 

"He's functionally half-Aesir, half-Terran," Loki explained, ignoring Bucky's raised eyebrow.

It was true, though, if not in so many words. Everything Bucky had told him about his capture had intimated that Hydra's doctors had used the magic of the cube—the magic of Asgard—to infuse him with the qualities and lifespan of an Aesir. 

"Oooh, that isn't a combination you ever hear of. No wonder you're so pretty." 

"Thanks," Bucky said. "You're pretty interesting, too. Where are _you_ from?"

The waitress was either very good at her job or else genuinely sweet on Bucky, for she answered with chatty ebullience. For his part, Bucky must have been feeling out his old Brooklyn charm, because he took her flirting in stride, while not conveying any sort of promise. Loki had never seen Bucky's flirtatious side in action; it was arousing, and he hated that it was being directed at someone other than himself. 

"And what about you?" the waitress asked when she finally remembered that Loki was there.

"I'm…" Loki found himself hesitating in the same way Bucky had.

"Aesir, with a little something special," Bucky answered smoothly.

"Two Aesir hybrids. No wonder you're the prettiest couple I've waited on all night."

"We aren't—" Loki began, only to be interrupted by Bucky.

"Thanks," he said, with a shark-like grin that he must have stolen out of Loki's arsenal. 

"What was that about?" he asked as soon as the waitress walked away. 

Bucky shrugged. "It was easier than explaining."

"You're getting good at lying," Loki said. "Must be my influence."

Bucky nodded, looking suddenly sad. "Yeah. Must be."

Falling into silence, they looked down and watched the dancers while they waited for their drinks and good. Loki kept glancing at Bucky, while maintaining a glamour that made it look like he wasn't. A sad sort of mood had come over him. Too sad for a night in Kritnal. However, without knowing the cause, Loki could not dispel it.

After awhile, apropos of nothing, Bucky asked, "So, what do you think you'll do? I mean, once we bring Asgard back."

"You mean 'if'."

Their current impasse was no longer a matter of translation. They'd decoded the last of the texts weeks before. The problem now was, embarrassingly, that Loki did not understand, conceptually, what it meant. Loki's sword had something to do with it, he could tell. One of the emeralds in the hilt held a power that amplified the spell. But _what_ , and _how_ , he had not yet discerned.

He only hoped that inspiration would strike before they reached their destination, which was now not too far away.

"You'll figure it out," Bucky said.

"Your optimism is unwarranted."

"I have a good feeling about it," he said. "And I don't say that a lot. Last time might have been when the Dodgers were up four to one against Cincinnati in 1939."

"And did your good feelings come to fruition?" Loki asked, deciding not to point out that Bucky had last said expressed this kind of optimism on the day they'd met, about Loki himself.

"Yeah, we won six to one. But seriously," Bucky pressed, with an unusual earnestness, "Do you think you'll go back to being king?"

"No. I don't think I will. Heimdall or Valkyrie would be much better suited, and have likely already assumed the role more solidly since my departure. I never truly enjoyed ruling," Loki admitted, for the first time aloud. 

"Well, maybe you can be culture minister. Write plays all day long."

Loki laughed, but it was a melancholy sound. The theatre was a diverting enough hobby, but not a full life. Suddenly, he was reminded of the intense boredom he'd felt for so many centuries. He wanted to restore Asgard, but he was no longer sure he wanted to restore the live he'd had there. Especially not with Thor gone. Too much had changed, both in the universe and within himself. He could see a long, long life stretched out before him with little to fill it. Time had passed much more fulfillingly in the past year, despite everything, but this year was one of travel and transition, not permanence.

And that fulfilment, Loki could now admit to himself without denial, was due largely to Bucky. To Bucky, who might leave as soon as the quest was done and they returned to Earth so that Loki could pick up the Asgardians. The latest message they'd had from Earth was that the authorities were close to pardoning Bucky of all crimes. Apparently, Natasha had kept working on clearing his name, even after faking his death.

Loki had never asked Bucky for his plans, out of fear of not liking the answer. But given how close they were to the end… Plus, Bucky was the one who had brought it up. 

"I assume you'll wish to return to Earth," Loki posited.

"Is that what you think I should do?"

"Isn't that what you want?"

"The stuff that made it home is all gone. Even my goats. I don't know what I'd be going back for."

"Asgard will always welcome you. I will make sure of it. I intend keep you at my side forever."

Bucky must have shared Loki's fear of the wrong answers, because his face lit up, signifying that Loki must have stumbled upon the right one. "Really?"

"Who else could recite my words so alluringly?"

"Right."

They talked of other things after that, mindless chit-chat. All the while, Bucky drank steadily from the clear pitcher their waitress had left on their table.

It took awhile, but Loki began to think Bucky might be inebriated. His movements grew looser. His Brooklyn accent, usually muddied in Loki's ears by the All-Speak, grew strong enough to be audible. He scooched a little closer at one point in order to make himself heard over the loud music, but then did not move away. He nuzzled into Loki's side, not seeming to realize how painful the press of his metal arm was against Loki's ribs. But Loki didn't say anything, both because he was enjoying the closeness, but also because he had always liked a little pain. 

A drunk Bucky, Loki was learning, rivaled a mechanic or warrior Bucky in terms of appeal. A faint flush persisted across his cheeks. His hair, normally so soft and fluffy, matted sweaty and greasy across his face, held there by the sheen of sweat across his brow. In strobed darkness, his greyish eyes shone with the same steeliness as the arm Loki had picked out for him.

"Hey, look at that." Bucky placed his hand on Loki's to get him to stop talking and look in the direction that Bucky's chin pointed. There was nothing unnatural about the impulse or about the touch, but it made Loki's heart do odd, flopsy things that he didn't like. All his attention was immediately focused on the bench, in the space between their legs, where Bucky's hand rested on his. 

Loki had always been able to hold his breath for an unnaturally long time, but even he eventually ran out of air and had to remind himself to breathe, as minutely and unobtrusively as possible. 

It would have been so easy to... to do something. To squeeze the fingers beneath his. To pick up his palm, and bring Bucky's along with it to his lips for a kiss, closed with a kitten lick to Bucky's lifeline. It would have been so easy to tilt his head at just the right angle for the sparkling lights to make his eyes look watery and longing. Loki had once excelled at seduction. Honeyed words and a silken voice had been his chief weapons. 

He was no Thor, but enough experienced had led him to believe that he possessed a certain charm. But all his conquests had been just that: conquests. Prizes to be won. Momentary alleviations of his boredom. The few people he'd truly longed for had never spared him a glance, and he'd feared failure and humiliation too much to try. Real feelings left him queasy; even coming to Thor's room on the Statesman after escaping Surtur's sword had been preceded by three self-delivered pep talks and a bout of retching, followed by a swig from Valkyrie's bottle to wash away the stench.

He felt rather than saw Bucky turn towards him. Loki continued staring straight ahead, and so could not read Bucky's expression. It took all his concentration to glamour away the bulge that thickened in his pants the longer Bucky's hand stayed on his. 

"I feel like dancing," Bucky said thickly, eagerly.

"All right. Go ahead," Loki said with relief. Anything to break this unbearable stalemate. 

But that must have been the wrong answer, because Bucky gulped down the rest of his glass, and left with a heavier tread than normal. 

Loki was punished, over and over again, for the rest of the night. Miserably, he watched from his elevated booth as Bucky shoved his way to the front of the bar, as he imbibed more than he had any business imbibing. Worst of all was when a man Loki recognized as one of the Sovereign—a beautiful specimen of an already beautiful species, all tall and handsome and perfect and gleaming gold—approached Bucky. Loki watched as they pulled away, together, from the bar and over to the dance floor. He watched as Bucky practiced the endearing but disastrous 'moves' that he every so often broke into in their ship. He watched the Sovereign dance a little closer, his shining face increasingly close to Bucky's pale one.

Loki couldn't take it anymore. He began casting illusions that only the Sovereign could see. First, a snake climbing up the speakers to his left. Then a third eye blinking ominously in the center of Bucky's forehead. Finally, for a grand finale (and yes, this was a little mean, even for him, Loki admitted to himself) a vision of Thanos walking out of the water towards him.

It did not take long for the Sovereign to run screaming for the exit, shoving other dancers out of the way in his terror. 

Bucky looked up at their booth, but Loki had already made himself invisible and put in his place an illusion whose whole body stared implacably at the sight of the moon rising in the other direction. 

After that, it was not long before they made their way back to the continent on which their hotel was located. Bucky continued to sway to music they could no longer hear. He leaned against Loki, practically nuzzling him. By the time they approached their floor, Loki was all but carrying him. 

"Did you enjoy the dancing?" Loki asked.

"It was fine. Scratched the itch."

"You certainly caught the eye of that Sovereign."

"Oh, is that what they're called?" To Loki's surprise, Bucky didn't seem that interested.

"Yes, and they are famously snobby. It is quite a compliment that he deigned to dance with you."

"They are? He seemed friendly enough." Bucky looked sidelong at Loki. "Until he went all weird. Like something spooked him. I wonder what got into him."

"Oh really? I wasn't paying attention," Loki said with what he thought was admirable innocence. "But they are also famously skittish and paranoid. Anything might have set him off."

"Huh," Bucky said with a little chuckle. "Honestly, I was almost relieved he ran off."

"Oh, really?"

"Yeah," Bucky said, but appeared to be too drunk and half-asleep to elaborate.

Loki eased Bucky off him as soon as they reached the central living room of their suite. 

"Are you lucid enough to put yourself to bed?"

Bucky's high spirits had wilted along with his posture. "Yeah." He heaved a big sigh. "Night, Loki."

"Good night."

Loki had been looking forward to this—to a night of luxury after so many cramped ones on their ship. Although not his preferred suite, this room boasted all the Kritnal hallmarks: from the sunken bed, to the diving bath, to the menu of ambient sounds. It should have been a recipe for a good night's sleep, but Loki could not grow comfortable. His cock, which had remained in a state of low-grade arousal for the majority of the evening, demanded release. He spread himself out on the bed, taking up all the room he lacked in his usual bunk. He touched himself to the thought of Bucky's awful dancing. 

Oh no, he thought to himself after a depressing climax. 

This had grown serious.

* * *

"I keep telling myself that we'll visit other places again soon," Bucky said. "That this isn't the last stop."

They had stopped for one last refuel at Volkorian. Fandral had liked to visit here when he'd needed a break from Asgardian tailoring, food, and brothels, but didn't want to travel _too_ far. After this, Loki and Bucky would make a couple of short hyper-space jumps to the coordinates where Asgard once stood. 

This was what they had worked towards for over a year. A short amount of time in the scheme of Loki's lifespan, but significant in terms of all how much he'd really lived, even if quietly—especially because quietly—with Bucky.

"I'll meet you back here," Loki said. "I have to take a piss."

"Yeah, okay," Bucky said without taking his eyes off the fuel meter.

Loki was still hunting around the mostly empty station for the lavatories when he felt an armored hand on his arm. He shook it off and turned around, only to be faced with four enormous soldiers standing in a line.

"Yeah, that's him," one of them said, consulting a tablet that bore a photograph of his face. Loki recognized it as one taken near the end of one of the Grandmaster's more excessive parties. Suffice to say, Loki had not been looking his best. Between the photograph's setting and the liveries of the soldiers, Loki recognized them, with cold, growing horror, as Sakaarian. 

Loki didn't have a chance to fight back before all four had grabbed him. They had him immobilized before he'd done much more than kick. The last one placed his hand over Loki's mouth, earning a painful bite to his palm, but he was too well trained to pull away and let Loki make any noise.

They dragged him to the other end of the refueling station towards a ship whose gaudy stripes could only have been Sakaarian. 

"The Grandmaster wants to have a word with you," one of the soldiers said. 

Loki tried harder to kick, because he would _not_ be kidnapped, not here, not when he was so close to his goal. Moreover, he would not, could not, be taken back to Sakaar.

He was still thinking of a plan, or a bribe, when one of the soldiers holding him stumbled. He stumbled again, and then so did another. One by one, they fell. Loki jolted when he saw a large grey bullet come out the front of one of their foreheads. Someone jumped on the back of the man holding him, jerking Loki out of his grasp. Loki fell, panting, to the ground, and looked up in time to see Bucky, because of course it was Bucky, fighting off three of them. He was holding his own, but there was a moment when it looked like they might overpower him. 

Loki stepped in, needing only a second to catch his breath, and helped. Bucky seemed to have been hit, or stabbed, but Loki lacked the vantage point to be sure. He dismissed the worry almost immediately, when Bucky failed to slow his attack. He remained as furious a warrior as ever and did not stop fighting until all the soldiers had been executed. Together, they hid the bodies in the lavatory that Loki no longer needed _quite_ so desperately, and then all but ran to their ship. Bucky effected his fastest take-off yet.

"And here I was thinking we'd gotten far enough away from ravager bases to worry," Bucky panted when as soon as they'd gotten clear of the atmospheric security. He was more winded than he should have been. Yes, the fight had been hard, but Loki had seen Bucky exert himself harder with less consequence.

"They weren't ravagers. This was a different contract."

"You sure are popular. Who wants you now?"

"They were sent by the Grandmaster."

Instead of reacting properly, with anger and fear for Loki's safety, Bucky keeled over in his pilot's chair. He hit his head on the landing levers and slid to the floor. 

"What—" Loki began to ask.

"I don't feel so good. Gotta go to bed." Bucky tried to lift himself up by grabbing onto the dashboard, but he simply fell over again.

"I can help you to your room," Loki said, too shocked at Bucky's sudden, uncharacteristic weakness to think straight. "But what about the ship? Will we be safe if you leave the cockpit?"

Bucky laughed weakly from his place on the floor. "We've been on this ship a year, and you still don't know anything about how space travel works, do you?"

"I've always had you to take care of it," Loki said, suddenly panicked that something was seriously wrong with his normally impervious friend.

Bucky gave Loki a few quick instructions to get them safely on auto-pilot and heading along a harmless route. Then, Loki had Bucky wrap his arms around his neck, and carried him, like a handsome sack of wheat, to Bucky's little room. He deposited him in the bed and turned on the light. Bucky whimpered and put his hand in front of his face.

"Too bright, too much," he grumbled, but Loki had seen enough to know what was wrong with him and to fear it.

"What did they do to you?" he asked. "What happened during the altercation?"

"Injected me with something," Bucky mumbled. "They were coming at you with a needle, so I got in the way."

"And why did you not say anything?" Loki's voice increased in furious pitch at every word.

"Had to keep fighting. Had to keep running. Didn't think anything of it. Wasn't the first time someone's injected me with something. Nothing usually happens. But now it hurts. It hurts, Loki, all over."

Bucky was not one for complaining, so it must have hurt a great deal for him to say anything about it. 

Loki felt Bucky's temperature. He was sizzling. He had him open his mouth, and the very slightly blue tinge to his tongue confirmed it.

"This is bad," Loki whispered to himself.

"What is it?"

"One of the Grandmaster's favorite compounds. It's meant to incapacitate a victim while keeping them relatively lucid, conscious and, well, flexible. However, it is meant for beings with colder blood than yours. It is meant for beings like me."

"What'll happen?"

"If you don't get the antidote? Your blood, through which the poison now rushes, will overheat in a day or two. You'll die."

Bucky groaned again. "And here I was hoping it would work itself out. But, there's an antidote?"

"Yes, it is a simple enough formula. I can make it here, in the kitchen."

"Something tells me there's a 'but'."

"Well, it comes in two variations. An aphrodisiac and a kind of truth serum. Both their own afflictions, really, but afflictions that counteract the effects of the potion they gave you. The two things are more similar than you might think. At their core, they make the subject desperate to 'expel', in dramatic ways requiring an overcoming of normal inhibitions. In the case of the truth serum, the subject is forced, by needs beyond their will, to divulge every thought or secret or feeling aloud, to answer even when no one has asked them anything. It is a purge of the mind through the mouth. As for the aphrodisiac, it does the same thing, but through orgasm. Many orgasms."

"So, you're telling me my options are to spill my guts until I've told you every single thing I can think of, or I have to jerk it over and over until I'm running dry."

"Dry and beyond," Loki said, feeling aroused just thinking about it. "But, no. 'Jerking it', as you say, is not the answer." 

"What then?"

"You'll soon be too weak to do it yourself. The most effective method of fulfilling the aphrodisiac, for males, is to put pressure on the source of the release. The kind of pressure that can only be achieved with a partner."

"You mean…"

"I'd have to help you."

"You mean you'd have to fuck me." Bucky threw his head back and let out another groan, one that was half from pain and half from emotion. "Jesus Christ. Why did it have to be this?"

"Because the Grandmaster is a lunatic and a sadist. The choice of antidote was the very reason that made this his favorite punishment drug of choice."

"Wait," Bucky said. 

It must have taken all that remained of Bucky's prodigious strength to prop himself on his elbow. Loki had seen this drug administered enough times to know.

"You'd do that?" Bucky asked. "You'd want to? Help me… fuck me, I mean."

"Of course. I need you to fly the ship the rest of the way, don't I?" Loki tried to feign nonchalance about this, about Bucky and how badly he wanted him, about the severity of the situation. He could tell it was not working, so he cut short his efforts at levity. "But it doesn't matter, because I will go create the truth serum right—"

"I'll take the aphrodisiac."

"What?"

"I don't want the truth serum. Gimme the sex stuff," Bucky repeated with a low groan of pain that Loki immediately became too furious to care about.

"You are actually choosing… _that_ over a bit of truth? I see now how it is. After all this time, after all we've been through, you still don't trust me—"

"You think letting you fuck me isn't trust?" Bucky spat back before collapsing again into incomprehensible groans and whimpers.

Loki had an argument on the tip of his tongue, but watching Bucky, he swallowed it down again. The poison was causing Bucky more pain than Loki had seen in previous victims. He needed the antidote, and soon. 

Loki ran to the kitchen, where he rooted around the pantry for the more day-to-day ingredients. Then he summoned the rest from the pocket universe he used for storage of such objects. He had not made anything like this in a very long time, not since centuries again when he'd drugged the Vanaheimian delegation, but the process came back to him as soon as he saw everything laid out in front of him. The only difference between that potion and this aphrodisiac was the amount of star core, and the direction of the stirring. 

As he stirred, he gazed at his reflection in the kitchen's powered-down navigation monitor. This was going to happen. He was going to touch Bucky, fuck Bucky. Finally do everything he'd been fantasizing about. He needed to steel himself to get through this without giving himself away, without letting Bucky know how desperately Loki did want it, even if Bucky didn't. 

This was not how he'd envisaged the day going. 

He stopped in the doorway of Bucky's room, holding a dripping syringe in his hand. Bucky had already removed his clothes, apparently with great effort, because they were haphazardly draped all over him, as though he'd run out of energy to toss them off to the floor like he usually did. Loki felt a twinge of guilt for finding him as desirable at such a moment, but Bucky was beautiful, even like this. He glistened with sweat, and had flushed a pleasant pink all the way down to the impressive cock that lay soft and sweet in the center of his groin.

Loki gulped. Trying to appear calm, he said, "Give me your arm."

Bucky held out his flesh arm so that Loki could prick him in the crease of his elbow. 

"How fast does it start working?" Bucky asked.

"It will not be long. Almost immediate."

Bucky closed his eyes. "Okay." 

Loki sat awkwardly on the edge of the bed. "Do you want to keep your arm on or off? What would be most comfortable for you?"

Bucky struggled to think as both the poison and the aphrodisiac ravaged his system, but he eventually stammered out, "On. In case you need me on hands and knees."

Loki's mouth went dry at this, as he imagined Bucky before him, presenting himself for fucking. It took him longer than he felt proud of before he could reply, "You likely won't have the strength for such a position. I'll… I'll take you another way."

"Okay." Bucky touched Loki's upper thigh, just resting his hand there, as a signal of intent, while he looked deeply into Loki's terrified eyes. "You're hard," he said wondering. "You're already hard."

Loki looked down at his groin, where, yes, his trousers had already tented rather obscenely. He coughed. "I worked myself up while waiting for the potion to coalesce," he lied, because he'd gotten hard just from seeing Bucky spread out like a feast before him. "Arousing myself is fairly necessary for what we need to do, is it not?"

Bucky chuckled through his pain. "You're really impossible, you know what? The most contrary bastard I've ever met."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Loki asked, not sure how offended he should be.

But Bucky never got around to answering, because his own body had begun to distract him. His metal hand began to trace odd patterns around his quickly hardening nipples. It wasn't long before his cock was wrapped in a shining silver hand that pulled slowly, ever so slowly.

"Think it's kicking in. God, I'm hot. Hot in a different way from before. Loki…" He squeezed Loki's thigh, which he had never stopped touching. "I need… Fuck."

Loki looked up at the shelves that lined the room—anywhere that was not Bucky, if only for a moment so that he could keep his sanity. "Where do you keep… Shall I go to my room to fetch my…"

"The slick's at the back of the second shelf."

Loki bounded out of the bed and went rooting around through piles of useless rubbish (Bucky's infinite "souvenirs") before finding a large bottle of very expensive Xandarian lubricant.

"And all this time I considered you rather frugal," he tried to joke.

"This is weird," Bucky mumbled, looking up at Loki while he stroked himself (and coming rather close to giving Loki a different kind of stroke in the meanwhile). 

"Which part exactly?"

"I never thought…" Bucky closed his eyes. He was not in a condition to answer even simple questions. "You're wearing too many clothes. Come on, Loki, let me see you."

Loki knew it was only the drug talking, but Bucky sounded so beseeching that he could not help but comply. His clothes were magicked off and folded up over in his room within a second. Bucky's responding moan could have been one of appreciation or pain; Loki couldn't tell. But he watched hotly as Loki climbed over him.

"What do you want?" Loki asked. "Tell me as best you can, and I will do everything in my power to comply."

"Touch me."

True to his word, Loki placed his hand over Bucky's metal one so that they stroked him together. Soon, however, the metal hand slipped away to leave Loki doing all the work. Bucky stared like a man entranced at Loki's thumb swiping precome from the tip. Loki stared at Bucky's open, beautiful, gratified face with what he feared might be the same expression, though with less of an excuse.

"More," Bucky demanded. He shifted to spread his legs wider, to arch his back and offer more of his chest to Loki. He dragged Loki's free hand from where it fisted tensely in the sheets to his mouth. He sucked two of Loki's fingers into his mouth with a purposeful suction that went straight to Loki's already leaking cock. Loki's eyes fluttered shut, and Bucky took advantage of that moment of inattention to then bring Loki's wet fingers to Bucky's right nipple.

"Like that," he mumbled. "More. Please."

It took only a few seconds of this before Loki shook himself out of paralysis. He was a prince of Asgard; princes of Asgard did not remain inactive for long. With a shake of his head and a deep breath, he re-centered himself. 

This was happening, and it was happening _now_.

He settled himself along Bucky's side, steeling himself against the needy little noises Bucky made during the three seconds that Loki needed to stop touching him. Bucky scuttled as close as he could get to Loki's cool skin, never mind if it made the angle a little more difficult. His face was close, too close, to Loki's. Loki could feel him breathe a little harder every time Loki pinched a little harder. 

"Have you done this before? With a man, I mean," Loki asked gently. He had seen Bucky dance with that Sovereign on Kritnal, but had not been able to tell for certain if he'd been in a mood to dance with anyone, or if he'd been interested. And the stories he told of his youth had mainly been about girls from the neighborhood.

"Once," Bucky panted against Loki's chin. "One night on leave. Patrick… But we did it the other way. I've never…"

"I will take this as slowly as I can, but it may be more than you will like. This compound demands quick, well, _results_."

"Don't care." He looked down at Loki's groin and tentatively reached out to it. "Can I?"

"If you like," Loki managed to say, instead of screaming his assent. He had to bite his lip at the first shy touch. 

"Your cock's as nice as the rest of you."

"I'm not very nice."

"No, you're not," Bucky said nonsensically, and yet fondly. "Loki, I need…"

"You need to come," Loki said, because he was familiar with this potion, too, although he had never personally experienced the affliction.

"Need to come," Bucky agreed in a croaking voice, and then, after a well-practiced twist of Loki's palm, he did, with pained little cries accompanying each spurt. His entire face seized up, going through a repeating catalog of expressions with each pulse of his thick cock. 

When he had finished, it remained just as hard as before. 

"Fuck," Bucky said weakly, with a little smile that almost smote Loki where he lay.

"We are not yet done. One moment." Loki extricated his cock from Bucky's hand and his own hands from Bucky's body just long enough to move down the bed. He spread Bucky's loose limbs even farther apart so he could kneel between the legs. As he poured lubricant into his hands, he took in the entirety of the view: Bucky, hard and leaking and flushed and wanton and looking at Loki with the kind of desperate desire that only drugs could produce.

"You are beautiful," he heard himself saying, too late. 

Bucky broke into a wide, happy grin—the most lucid and normal reaction he'd had since they'd returned to the ship. "Not so bad yourself."

Loki took advantage of that moment of relaxation to rub his lubricated finger against the tight furl of Bucky's hole. Not enough to press in; just enough to show intent. 

Bucky tensed, but only for as long as it took for Loki's other hand to wrap around his cock again. There was something overwhelming about the way Bucky licked his lips, the way his gaze flickered helplessly between Loki's hand on his cock and Loki's concentrated face. Loki had never seen such a rapt, happy expression on a lover's face before. But again, he'd never before fucked anyone who'd been out of their mind on such a concoction.

It was Bucky, in the end, who cut short Loki's efforts to ease him gently into the thing. He shifted his muscular bottom against the sheets in such a way to push the tip of Loki's finger inside. They both gasped as Bucky was breached, as they both registered the sensation of Loki's long finger stretching those hot, soft walls. Bucky kept shifting, kept urging more inside him, until Loki's finger had gone all the way in and his palm cupped Bucky's balls.

"Never knew… Never thought…"

"You like it." Loki understood. He remembered experiencing a similar surprise when first he'd been breached, so long ago, by an Einherjar who'd then gone on to boast about his prowess to any of the common soldiery who would listen. Loki's first time had been spoiled by what came after; he rued that Bucky's first time was already ruined by the entire situation surrounding it. However, he vowed to make it as pleasurable as he could for Bucky, within the awful parameters. As he pushed a second finger into Bucky's unbearably tight passage, he whispered, "I, too, could not believe how nice it could be."

"Bet it'll be even better with your cock." To underscore his eagerness, Bucky reached out for it.

Loki, who had been keyed up since mixing the compound in the kitchen, suddenly felt how close he was, despite having barely been touched. He tried to disengage Bucky's deliciously cool metal fingers, which felt so good against his over-hot shaft. "No, Bucky, I can't… I'll come."

"So?" Bucky asked between moans and even more arousing wriggling to get Loki's fingers in deeper. "I've heard you go four times in a night. You can get hard again."

"What?" What few working brain cells Loki had left all went on strike faster than a Trylorian on a public works project.

Bucky licked his lips, as though savoring a delectable memory. "That night, I came, too. Twice."

And that was it. More than Bucky's metal fingers working his cock, it was the image of Bucky lying in his bed, touching himself while listening to Loki work himself to climax after climax that sent Loki hurtling to orgasm, pumping thick spurts of come, over and over, so hard that a couple hit Bucky just below the nipple. Loki bit his lip so hard that he punctured the thin skin.

"Woah," Bucky breathed. The sight of him sucking his come-soaked fingers into his red, well-licked mouth coaxed a last, desperate spill out of Loki.

"Bucky, what…"

"''s not so bad," he said, letting the white glob sit on his tongue as he reached down to push Loki's hand even harder against him, push the fingers even further in.

Loki decided that if he didn't get on with it and fuck Bucky, he'd die. He kneed himself closer, urging Bucky's legs to wrap loosely around him. Bucky was still in too much pain from the initial poison—pain that flashed across his face every minute or so despite the strong distractions—and too floppy from the aphrodisiac to grip Loki with his strong thighs. But it didn't matter. The position was close enough to some of Loki's choice fantasies. He pressed his hands into the bed on each side of Bucky, holding himself over him. 

"I'm going to enter you now," he said, half a second after he'd already begun. 

Bucky inhaled so frantically and tensed so tightly that Loki had to move one of his hands to Bucky's face. He stroked Bucky's temple with his thumb, hoping to calm him. "It's all right. It's shocking at first, I know."

"Big," Bucky choked. "So big." 

"What do you need?" Loki asked as he, with greater control than he'd known himself capable, pushed incrementally more of himself inside Bucky's perfect—Norns, he felt perfect, better than any fantasy, better than any reality—body. 

Bucky leaned his head into Loki's reassuring caresses and tried to use his legs to pull Loki impossibly closer to him. "More. Please, Loki. Need to come again. Need to feel you."

Loki could feel from the spike in Bucky's temperature that the aphrodisiac had completely suffused his system now, kicking the need into a higher gear. Although he did not think Bucky had been sufficiently prepped, he knew that he needed to move. He pulled out and gave a tentatively fast thrust back in. And then another in quick succession. Followed by a very hard one aimed directly at where he suspected Bucky's prostate to be.

Like a live wire, Bucky arched dramatically off the bed with a wordless cry. As Loki picked up a rhythm, two tears—of strain, or effort—began to leak out of the corner of one of Bucky's eyes. He came again, brokenly calling Loki's name, as soon as he felt Loki tenderly brush them away with his thumb. 

He was still hard. Loki was still pressing insistently against his prostate with every thrust. 

"It hurts," Bucky moaned, though whether from overstimulation or the poison, Loki could not tell. He reached up to hold Loki's shoulders, pressing so hard into the muscle with his metal fingers that Loki could tell he would have a bruise in a few hours. A bruise that, even though it would likely only last a few hours, he could use to relive this moment.

"It hurts," Bucky repeated.

"I know," Loki said, even as he thrust harder, feeling each stab in his heart just as Bucky felt it in his ass. He could feel his control of both his face and his body begin to crack when he found himself saying, "I wish you had not jumped in front of that needle. I wish—"

"I don't," Bucky interrupted, and there was something in his gaze, something that Loki had never seen before, and did not know how to parse. Something that made his head spin and his stomach clench. They looked at one another for a moment that seemed to last an eternity.

And then, out of nowhere, Bucky's eyes widened and sparkled, as though he'd just had a bright idea. "Loki," he said, from an increasingly narrow distance between their mouths, "I figured out… I know how…" 

The odd moment, obviously drug-induced, must have taxed Bucky too much, because he suddenly collapsed, after appearing, if only for a millisecond, to be about to kiss Loki. He seemed beyond speech how, capable only of little "uh-uh-uh" noises at every one of Loki's thrusts. His eyes squeezed shut and his flesh hand moved to his cock, but he lacked the strength to bring himself off. 

Loki sat back on his heels and picked Bucky up. He positioned them so that Bucky slumped against him, Bucky's head resting against his shoulder. Bucky's arms wrapped around him tight, hands clasping near the small of Loki's back. From this position, Loki braced himself with one hand behind him and thrust even harder, upwards, into Bucky, over and over. Bucky's cock rubbed between their stomachs, slicked by sweat and Bucky's previous spendings. He sucked wetly over the spot on Loki's shoulder where the redness would turn into a bruise.

From the stench of pheromones spiking to unsustainable levels, Loki could tell that Bucky's next climax would be the last, the biggest, the one that would satisfy the aphrodisiac and expel the poison. However, from the way Bucky was clutching Loki's back and all but kissing his shoulder, Loki was not certain that even his impressive stamina—longer-lasting even than Thor's, he'd learned from a stupid competition they'd had in their youth—would hold. 

"Bucky," he tried to warn, tightening the arm that was holding Bucky up and against him. "I'm close. I'm so… Where…"

"In me," Bucky answered readily. "Please, I need it, Loki."

It took only three more thrusts before Loki cried out and began to spill. He'd thought he'd come hard the first time, but this second orgasm surprised even him with its strength and volume. He shivered, barely able to hold Bucky up as he spurted again and again into Bucky's impossibly tight heat.

"Oh god, I can feel it…" Bucky said as he, too, clenched and came against Loki's taut stomach, presumably from the sheer filthiness of the sensation of being filled. They rocked together, babbling aborted versions of one another's names, and did not stop until Loki's still-hard cock accidentally slipped out, and with it, rivulets of his seed. 

Bucky had collapsed entirely, nothing more than a heavy weight that Loki no longer had the strength to sustain. Loki disentangled them and lay him gingerly on the bed. Bucky was already most of the way to asleep, but his proper color had returned and he no longer moaned in pain. The furrow of discomfort that had marred his otherwise perfect features throughout the entire ordeal had disappeared. His cock finally softened and lay sweetly against the crease of his now-wet groin.

It was over. He would sleep and wake up well.

Loki extricated himself from the room as quietly as he could and made his way to the lavatory. As he took his still painfully hard cock in hand, he summoned the fresh memory of Bucky's ecstatic face to wring out one last, exhausting orgasm. Once he'd settled himself, he returned to Bucky's room with a warm cloth to wipe away the remnants of their coupling from his friend's soft skin. Then he closed the door and returned to his room, feeling numb and aroused and despairing all at once. 

They were due to arrive at their destination in only fifteen hours. Loki had still not made sense of the remaining runes, and whatever burst of inspiration he'd hoped to receive in the pressure of the moment would now be swallowed by the turmoil of this ultimately unsatisfying satisfaction. Loki's longing had attained resolution, in the most frustrating manner possible.

Worse, he dreaded what Bucky's waking state would be. He dreaded what he might have let slip during that moment when he had felt his mask of duty fall. 

He did not fall asleep for many hours.

* * *

Of course, after Loki had just spent hours imagining horrible scene after horrible scene, Bucky woke up and evinced as little awkwardness as he had on the day they'd met. He slung himself into his usual seat in the dining area, across from where Loki was sitting and listlessly picking at some rehydrated meat.

"Hey," he said cheerily, as though nothing of import had happened.

Two could play this game. 

"How are you feeling this morning?" Loki asked.

"Great. Thanks, by the way."

"It was nothing."

"Didn't feel like nothing," Bucky said with a suggestive waggle of his eyebrows. When Loki tensed his jaw in lieu of a response, he shook his head. "Ridiculous, as always."

"What do you mean?"

"Nothing. We should be almost there, right?"

"We are so close that I was about to come wake you. We'll likely need your piloting skills to keep us from hitting the debris that was spewed into the surroundings when the realm exploded."

"On it." Bucky took the breakfast brick Loki had rehydrated for him and walked to the cockpit with it between his teeth.

"I still have not devised a plan," Loki said as he followed him. "I still don't know how to wield the sword properly, nor how to generate enough magic for a spell this big, nor…"

"Don't worry. I've got it," Bucky said absently. He was quite busy navigating the ship through the bits of rock.

"What do you mean?" Loki asked.

"I mean I figured it out. What we're supposed to do. The sword, the spell, all of it."

Loki fell into the co-pilot seat that had never seen any actual piloting action. His jaw fell about the same distance. "What do you mean, you've figured it out?"

"It just all fell into place. While we were, you know."

"Fucking?" Loki asked in disbelief, because he hadn't thought it possible to have any kind of rational thought during sex, especially not during sex that intense, but apparently Bucky, despite all appearances, had been so bored that he _had_.

"Yeah. Part of it, anyway. I figured out the rest of it awhile ago."

"You never said anything."

"I thought it would be better if you didn't know. I didn't want you to overthink it."

"Aren't we going to talk about it?" Loki snapped. "About what happened…"

"You hate talking about stuff."

"And yet you usually insist." Bucky's mood had Loki's suspicions rising with each minute; Loki didn't know what had gotten into him, and began to worry that something had gone terribly wrong with the cure for his poisoning. "What's going on?"

"We're here." Bucky shifted the ship into a hover gear. 

Loki stood up and craned his neck to look out and up. Bucky had navigated them just underneath the spot where the lower-most point of Asgard had once floated. That central firmament was gone, destroyed utterly. But they had another, in the sword hilt. 

Bucky dragged the heavy sword over to Loki and placed it in his hands. He read, yet again, the inscription on the hilt. "'Cleaving in cutting, nothing changing. Contrary chaos doth succeed double in negated despair, where heart's blood is harder than stone.'"

"It still sounds like gibberish."

"You need to go outside." Bucky pointed at the place above the ship. "If you stand on top of the ship, we'll be in position."

"All right, since you seem to have it all figured out. Put on your suit." Loki, like some other demi-gods, could exist in open space, but Bucky could not. 

But Bucky surprised him by shaking his head. "No, that's not how this goes."

"You have to wear a suit. How else will you breathe?"

"That's the point. I won't. You have to stab me with this."

Loki blanched. "No."

"Yes, it'll be all right. I promise. Look, you're kind of the opposite of Thor, right? The hammer helped him harness his power because it calmed him down. But you're at your most chaotic—most powerful—when you're out of control. Everything about you is opposite everything, including yourself. You really _are_ a contrary bastard, even more than I always say you are."

"I don't follow."

"The reason your plans turn to shit is because you don't realize they always work contrary. That's what the sword is saying. If you try to cut me down, it'll just join. Join _us_. That's the cleaving part. My heart's blood is your heart's blood."

"No, it isn't."

"Yes, it is." Bucky smiled smugly. "I told you, when we met. I told you that you were gonna love me. And now you do." 

"I… You…" Loki sputtered, but Bucky silenced him with the kiss he had not given him the night before. It was a chaste kiss, but it tingled even more than the phantom memory of having been inside Bucky. 

"I wasn't sure until last night," Bucky said against Loki's lips. "You've been sending a hell of a lot of mixed messages, but there was a minute last night when I could see it on your face."

Loki let the admonition stand in favor of kissing Bucky again. "I didn't think you cared," he said when they next came up for air.

"Maybe I should have rented a billboard." 

Loki didn't want this to be the way, but the logic of Bucky's thinking matched the logic of the type of magic they'd studied together for this project. "You sound very sure of how this will work," he said slowly.

"I ran the idea by a librarian in Omnipotence while you were off getting food. She said it checked out."

"Even if you are willing to die for Asgard, I am not willing to let you."

"You'll heal me. That's the 'despair negated' part. I've seen you heal wounds before. It'll be a piece of cake. I trust you."

"With your life?"

"Sure."

Loki couldn't believe it. He had spent so much time assuming that Bucky would never trust him enough to let him inside his mind, only to find him trusting beyond all understanding.

He decided to deserve it.

"Do you still have that short-range transporter? The one that wasn't actually a game piece?" he asked.

Loki studied the runes one last time before Bucky went to fetch it. When he returned, Loki clasped him close for the kind of kiss he wished they'd had long before. This one was anything but chaste.

" _Now_ he gets with the program," Bucky said when they finally separated for air. 

Although everything in him cried out against it, Loki took advantage of Bucky's momentary distraction to drive the sword through his heart. Bucky stiffened and moaned in his arms. Loki watched him suffer in order to drive the rage and despair that built up in him as he watched Bucky die. As his emotions heightened, the sword became lighter in his hands. He activated the transporter just as the snakes engraved in the hilt raised and began to wrap around his hands. Within a second, he was outside the ship, standing on the roof and pointing the blood-stained sword above his head. The words of the spell he had practiced for so many months poured out of him. As a result, the Stone of Creation in the sword began to glow. When the bits of rock that littered this star system began to swirl and solidify around it, he finally understood. The height of chaos was a contradiction. When directed and powered thus, it created order. It fixed what was broken.

He fell backwards, weakened by the strength expended in casting. However, the sword remained where he had left it. From the point and all around it, the pieces of Asgard gathered and grew. It was a beautiful, but Loki could not enjoy it. He transported himself back inside the ship to where Bucky lay bleeding on the floor of the cockpit. His breathing had just stopped, but there was life in him yet, if only barely.

Loki crouched over him and recited every bit of healing magic he had ever learned. The amount of power still flowing through him, though it lessened with each minute that passed since letting go of the sword, made the healing magic flow more smoothly than it ever had. He could feel the same power that was knitting Asgard back together knitting Bucky back together, as though he had never been stabbed. Within minutes, Bucky sat up with a gasp, smashing his forehead very painfully into Loki's chin.

"Ow," Loki said, sitting back and rubbing his face.

Bucky also rubbed at his head, but as soon as he had gotten his bearings, he asked, "Did it work?"

"We'll have to move the ship a bit to see, but… I believe it has." Loki stroked Bucky's face. "Are you all right?"

Bucky covered Loki's hand with his own and brought it to his mouth for a kiss, licking along the lifeline, just as Loki had wanted to do so many times. "As all right as I ever am." 

Bucky, who was as hale as though he had not been stabbed minutes ago and poisoned the day before, hoisted himself back into his seat. He flew the ship through clear space that had so recently been full of debris. As they backed away, they saw Asgard in all of its glory. Well, perhaps not _all_. The palace and all the buildings that had been built on the back of stolen or dark magic had failed to rematerialize. However, all the rivers and cottages and bridges Loki had loved dotted the landscape. Even the Bifrost shone like a beacon.

Holding hands, they stared in awestruck wonder.

"We did it," Loki said. 

"You never told me it was a _flat_ planet."

"Did I not? The fact is so fundamental that I must not have thought to mention it." 

Bucky squeezed Loki's hand harder. "What now?"

Loki thought. "We have two options. I wish we could take the Bifrost, but we would need Heimdall's sword to work it. So, it seems we must take the long way back, retrieve the Statesman, and bring Asgard here."

The idea seemed to please Bucky. "We can take a different route. Stop at different planets."

"The ship isn't big enough for another journey's worth of your souvenirs."

"It will be if I leave all the ones I have here. I can start fresh."

Loki groaned, but he was smiling too hard for anyone, including himself, to take it seriously.


End file.
